Nott!
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: "What are they like?" she asked softly, her voice almost hoarse. "Who? Our parents?" Hermione finds out she's adopted, & taking her mum's advice, may start out an entirely new lifestyle. DracoHermione RATED M!
1. Adopted

**Disclaimer**: I confess, I do not own _any_ of J.K.'s wonderful characters--though if I had any legal say in the matter of publishing, I would have refused to publish the last book because of the death-count, so I am boycotting all knowledge of _that book_ and take pleasure in writing my own stuff! Ha!... Let's take a few moments of silence for our fallen brethren. _FRED!!!!! :'(_

**Author's Note**: Inspired by another fic I scanned through, this is my take on the Adopted!Hermione storyline. Oh, and just in case you don't figure it out, it will be a Hermione/DRACO fic. Major smut in later chapters. Please REVIEW.

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**Character Names**:

Charles: German: 'strong'

Jean: Hebrew: 'god is gracious'

Hermione: Greek: 'well-born,' daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Sparta/Troy i.e. Uber-babe.

William: German: 'Resolute guardian'

Phaedra: Greek: 'glowing'

Theodore: Greek: 'divine gift'

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"Hermione, we need to talk."

"This is my first sweet of the day, Dad, I promise!" Hermione jumped, whirling around and trying guiltily to conceal the Tunnox Tea-Cake. It was _their_ fault, after all. They bought the bloody things. She couldn't help having a sweet-tooth in spite of having annoyingly pedantic dentists for parents. Her mother was convinced she had no idea where Hermione got her taste for sweets from.

"No, Hermione," her mum chuckled light-heartedly, rolling her eyes amusedly, "this isn't about corrosion of your enamel."

"Cool," Hermione shrugged, popping the last bit of cake into her mouth. Her dad rolled his eyes.

"Actually, this is a little less trivial than your daily sugar intake," Dad said solemnly. Hermione glanced between her parents and turned to her mother, eyes narrowed and her hands on her waist.

"Are you pregnant?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow threateningly, as if to say '_You'd better tell me the truth!_' Oh, she would be such a good parent! _Not_!

"What?" Mum laughed, surprised.

"Hermione, please be serious," Dad pleaded with a sigh.

"I would, if I knew what I was supposed to be serious about," Hermione prompted.

"Well, poppet," Mum began nervously. "There's…there's something your father and I have to tell you…that we should have told you a long time ago." _I'm adopted_, Hermione joked.

"Before you say anything, I already _know..._Father Christmas doesn't exist," Hermione said, and her parents' worried expressions relaxed a little.

"Hermione, what your mum's trying to say is…well, you are adopted," Dad said, and had Hermione still been eating her tea-cake she probably would have choked. _Urgh. Definitely might vomit_, she thought, massaging her stomach, which she had just filled with a brie-and-grapes sandwich, cheese and onion crisps, a Diet Coke and a slice of the banana-bread she'd made this morning.

"Huh?"

"Hermione, darling, now, we know you're not dim-witted," Dad joked feebly, looking on helplessly as Hermione stared at her parents. _Who they fuck are they if they're not my parents?_ she thought. No, this was some form of practical joke. Her dad had a sense of humour when he wanted one. There was no way she could be adopted. She was brown-eyed and brunette, like both her parents, she had her mother's womanly hourglass figure, her father's penchant for politics and her mother's love of learning.

"Honey, now, we know this is probably very difficult to digest," Mum said gently. _You're telling me_, Hermione thought, kneading her stomach, wincing painfully. "You have to understand that we—well, _we_ understood that you were ours, unconditionally. We didn't think you'd ever have to find out unless you had some horrible accident and needed a transplant—heaven forbid!"

"What does that mean?" Hermione asked, glancing at her mum, frowning. _Thought they'd never have to tell me?_ she thought disbelievingly. What was worse than thinking she was adopted was the fact that she could have led her entire life without knowing it. _Would you have cared if you'd never found out?_ she asked herself rationally. _No_. Mum and Dad _were_, and always would be, her parents. There were photographs on the walls—all of them motionless, of course—of her, from the age of one day old to just last week at the Little barbecue down the road.

"Well, you have to understand that the woman who brought you to us said you had no one else," Mum said tremulously. "She said you had no other family. Of course, how could we refuse you when we saw you, hm?" She gave Hermione a tentative little smile, nudging her jaw with a curled finger. Hermione jerked her head away, annoyed.

"So why tell me all this?" Hermione asked hostilely, glaring at her parents. _What purpose will it possibly serve?_ she thought, annoyed. The doorbell rang, and her parents started.

"Oh, good lord, that's probably them," Mum said in a hushed whisper, her fingers pressed to her lips, eyes wide. Dad glanced at Hermione and sighed.

"Well—and we didn't know about this until this morning, when the letter arrived at the office—your birth-parents are coming," Dad said. The doorbell rang again, as if a small child was outside and obsessed with pressing the tantalising button. Dad turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen, into the hallway and to the front-door. The Granger house was a large one, in the middle of the countryside, twenty minutes from Winchester. Mum tried to block Hermione's view of the front-door as she heard hushed conversation in the porch.

"I, well, you have to understand we've only just told her. You didn't give us very much time," her dad said nervously. Someone responded and her dad sighed. "Well, if you're sure. It could get ugly, I'm warning you now." _He's not wrong_, she thought, and set her face in a determined scowl as her father returned.

"Jeannie, why don't you put the kettle on?" Dad suggested, and Hermione still glared resolutely at him, arms folded across her chest. "Hermione, why don't you come with me?" His nerve was failing him, she could tell; his smile was strained, and his eyes showed how upset he was if the lines of stress in his face didn't. She traipsed behind him, arms clamped over her voluptuous chest, scowl set, and entered the living-room by the door at the foot of the stairs.

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**A.N.**: TaDa! PLEASE REVIEW, OR YOU'LL HAVE CHRONIC DANDRUFF AND TRIPLETS FROM YOUR FIRST PREGNANCY--_if_ you're a girl. I'll...I'll make you sing castrati if you're a boy! Mwahaha! I'm ill and over-excitable on too much tea... need cold Diet Coke...

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	2. A Nott

**Disclaimer**: I don't own HP!

**Author's Note**: Er... 73 hits and _NO REVIEWS_... So I've decided to add another chapter in hopes that someone _will_ address their views on my writing style &c. (I'm ill and home-bound. I'm _bored_. Amuse me.)

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"Well…here she is," Dad said lamely, and Hermione glared at him before looking at the others in the room. There were three other people. _Wizards_, was her first thought, catching sight of the woman's robes rather than her face. _Wizards. I'm…not Muggle-born_, she thought, stunned. The woman stood up immediately, with a delicate rustle of the expensive embroidered silk robes and the tinkle of her little earrings. Hermione glared at her. She was very lovely; tall, slim, elegant, with a coiffure of gorgeous golden curls that cascaded over her shoulders to her slim waist. She clasped elegant hands in front of her as she watched Hermione hopefully. Scowling deeper, she glanced at the two men. One was definitely older, maybe in his sixties, but with a head of dark hair, almost black, greying in places. Pureblooded wizards were reputed for their long life-spans.

_Oh god. His teeth_. Because he had smiled. She would never be able to look at a picture of Steven Tyler again. Because _this man_ had _her teeth_. Huge white teeth, straight, neat, too big. His face was thin, the cheekbones defined, the nose pert, a tiny bit of stubble below his lower-lip.

She glanced at the younger man. _He's not a man_, she corrected herself, looking at him. He was her age. And what was more, she recognised him. Vaguely; he was in her Arithmancy class, the only Slytherin. But he was very tall and excessively handsome. _Oh holy Garrett Hedlund_, she thought, because that was the figure to which she could most closely compare Theodore Nott. A lot of the girls in her year—their year—liked to look at Teddy Nott, even if he was deemed to proud to talk to anyone, except perhaps Draco Malfoy or Blaise Zabini.

_Urgh!_

_I'm related to the Notts._

_My _dad_ tried to kill me!_

_The fucking twat almost got us all killed_.

"Hello Harmonia." Hermione glanced around. _There's another girl? I have an invisible identical twin?_ But the woman was looking directly at her.

"My name is Hermione," Hermione growled obstinately. The woman blinked once and nodded, and even _smiled_ slightly at Hermione's rudeness.

"So Peronel got _that _wrong," the man said, frowning at nothing in particular. "You'll have to forgive us—" he man started, and she glared.

"Why?" Her snap at him stopped him short. She glanced at the woman, with a sinking feeling realising she had her eye-shape, if the man's colouring. Widely-spaced, the woman's were a light blue, giving her a dreamy, poetic, far-away look. _Probably married her for her looks_, she thought snidely. She had read about pureblood families. Marriages were rarely based on love. Financial or political status mattered more.

"Hermione, don't be rude," Dad admonished, giving her a look. She glowered back. _I'll be rude if I fucking want to_, she thought, challenging him with a look. Mum used her hip to open the office doors and came around to them from the other end of the long living-room, holding three tea-cups.

"I'll be back in a minute," she smiled, but it was strained, and she disappeared through the study again, returning with three more cups of tea, balancing two atop a Tupperware box filled with bourbon creams. Dad moved to one of the armchairs and sank down weakly, reaching for his tea, which he gulped down to have something to do. Theodore sat watching his hands as he clasped them, resting his forearms on his knees, his dad was making little exclamations about the bourbon creams—which were a thoroughly Muggle biscuit—and the woman was holding her teacup in trembling hands. Hermione had no sympathy for her feelings whatsoever.

"So, I think…well, I think we should start with some explanations," Mum began tremulously. "I don't even understand all of this myself."

"The fault is mine," Mr Nott said, half a biscuit perched between his lips—_My lips_, Hermione thought, her eyes burning.

"William, of course it isn't; don't say that," his wife said gently. "It's Peronel's fault. And mine for taking her word so faithfully."

"Get on with it," Theodore said impatiently, scowling at his parents. "I want to know. And Hermione's never been very patient in discovering new things." He glanced at her and Hermione tweaked an eyebrow. They had been rivals for the top grade in Arithmancy since third year, and before now she'd never actually heard his voice. He never said a word in lessons, but still managed to maintain that just-below-Top grade she always beat by a half-mark or something infuriatingly close like that. His voice was deep, raw, like his—_our_—father's.

"Well," Mrs Nott started, taking a steadying breath and a sip of strong builder's tea, "it begins when I went into labour with you, Hermione," she said, and gave Hermione a glowing smile that made Hermione feel slightly guilty of the dark looks she'd been giving her. "William had gone to Venice on a business venture that week—you were two weeks early—and my…my _sister_, Peronel, was the only one I could contact. She helped deliver you, and when I asked whether you were alright…she said you were stillborn." Hermione had never had any siblings—_well except _him_ sitting there_, she thought—but she felt like she did through the Weasley family, and through Harry's close friendship, but she could not even imagine one of the Weasley boys doing that to their brothers—definitely not to Ginny.

"Whatever her motives were then, I don't know," Mrs Nott said tearfully. "Jealous, I have always supposed, because I married William." Hermione glanced at Theodore, who shot her a mildly expressive look that told her there was an amusing little titbit to learn, and at her—at William, who shook his head slightly, squeezing his wife's hand comfortingly. "She had always loved William. I suppose it was too much for her that I had his child as well as—well, him," she gave William such a glowing smile Hermione wondered how he could _not_ jump her right there. His dark eyes roved ravenously over her exquisite face, and Hermione's regard for their love for each other warmed.

"So…what did she do with…with the baby?" Hermione asked, unable to say 'me'.

"Well—and I have to say, any woman who has ever given birth knows that our hormones are all over the place, and we're exceptionally vulnerable," she said tremulously, and Hermione thought she was probably reliving the experience, or the memory of it anyway. "So when she left the room with—well, with what I _assumed_ was a dead baby, well, I was too upset to do anything."

"You never cried when you were a baby," Mum said, sniffling even as she smiled. "You remember, I told you that? Never, _ever_ made a peep unless it was a giggle…You were such a sweet baby." _And what's that supposed to mean?_ she was going to ask, but didn't.

"Peronel confessed everything she had done last Christmas, on her death-bed," William said, and his wife's features hardened and she nodded. "She told us she had taken you to a Muggle household in the countryside, that the name was Granger. Teddy discovered you." Hermione glanced at Theodore and narrowed her eyes. He gave her a wary look. "Oh—you mustn't think Teddy had any involvement in this. He only found out last Christmas we had a 'stillborn child' before he was born, when he was _digging through my files_," William said, arching an eyebrow at his son. Theodore rolled his eyes boredly. _Insolently handsome, like Sirius_, she thought, with a pang. What Sirius wouldn't have given to see how low and malicious some people could go to torture their families!

"So what do you want with me?" Hermione asked, but her voice was despondent, not aggressive. Her parents—her _birth_ parents—glanced at each other and at Theodore. The woman's eyes sparkled.

"We—we would _really_ like to get to know you, Hermione," she said, her lyrical voice constricted. "Teddy's told us all he can about you, but…" _it hardly fills an A3-page_, Hermione thought, glancing at her _brother_. "We know you turn seventeen in September, and so if…if you wanted to come and stay with us for a few weeks, perhaps during the summertime before you finish school, we would _really_ love it. But, of course, we understand that you have a family already." The woman—her mother—gave Hermione's parents a warm smile.

"And from what Teddy's told us, they've done a remarkable job with you," William smiled, flashing all of those oversized white teeth. Hermione flushed embarrassedly. Her dad always said her failing, like her mother's, was her inability to take a compliment if it wasn't work-oriented. "Prefect?" She nodded. Yes, she _was_ a Prefect. _If only I didn't have to work with layabout Ron_, she thought with a tiny sigh.

"Hermione, why don't we go upstairs," Mum suggested quietly. "We can talk. Charlie, don't you dare eat all those biscuits." Dad glanced guiltily at his wife as he retrieved two biscuits from the box and William helped himself again, grinning. Hermione followed her mother upstairs, around the landing to her bedroom, which overlooked the road and the field beyond, filled with horses.

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**A.N.**: Please review! Otherwise I will weep. :'(

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	3. Packing

**Disclaimer**: Well don't you think if I owned HP I'd have the male characters chained up in my bedroom for my amusement? And the girls too. I'd like to scratch Cho Chang's face off with my incredibly short nails! Mwahaha!

**Author's Note**: Anyway, here is another chapter in celebration of over 300 hits in the first few hours I posted this story, so enjoy and _please_ review. They're very much appreciated. :)

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Her bedroom was sparsely furnished, but absolutely _filled_ with stuff. Books, mostly—the columns of books on their sides reached the window-sill and higher around the window—but she had her own magical record-player and a collection of vinyls—her guilty secret—and a few stuffed toys, and the dolls' house she'd had since her fifth birthday, which her paternal great-uncle had made for her. Mum closed the door behind her and sighed softly as she folded her arms across her chest, eyeing Hermione. Hermione just stood there, mimicking the pose she had picked up from her mother at the age of three.

"So what do you think?" Mum asked edgily.

"What do I think about what?" She started cleaning up her desk, which was still littered with her scrap parchment and broken quills. She'd already finished most of her summer assignments.

"Hermione, don't circle the issue," Mum said calmly. "Would you like to go and live with them?" Hermione glared at her mother.

"How can you even ask me that?" she snapped. "_You_ are my parents, no matter if that woman gave birth to me." Mum gave her a watery smile.

"Think about it, Hermione. We know you've always found it…difficult, being here and being a witch," Mum said carefully, and Hermione glanced at her, frowning. She'd always tried so hard to hide the fact that her being unable to do magic at home for practice irritated her, and though she'd never told her parents how much it hurt to be called a 'Mudblood', they knew it wasn't a phrase to be taken lightly. She hated the lack of resources, most of all. What she couldn't have done if she'd had magical parents… She licked her lips and swallowed, glancing back at her desk and busying her hands tidying her pens into an empty jam-jar. Her parents were both very ecology-conscious; they recycled everything. Babies too, apparently!

"But if I go with them, it'll be like I don't love you or appreciate what you've done for me," Hermione sniffled, inhaling sharply through her nose to stop it and quell the burning feeling at the back of her throat.

"Hermione, we've had you for nearly seventeen years," Mum smiled tearfully, resting her clever hands on Hermione's shoulders. "And I wouldn't give back a single _day_ for the world."

"But?" Her mother was sometimes so predictable. Mum chuckled softly.

"_But_, we _have_ had you for seventeen years, and that couple downstairs not at all…it seems selfish to keep you to ourselves, especially since you have so little time left as a student. You'll be going on to bigger and better things," Mum smiled. "You want to make a difference in your world. I'm afraid to say it, but your birth-parents have a much better position to help you after you finish Hogwarts." Hermione nodded. She had a point.

"Well, it's _entirely_ up to you," Mum said, making distinct eye-contact with her. "And whichever you choose, your daddy and I will love you unconditionally."

"You always have," Hermione said, sniffling as she rested her head on her mum's shoulder, wrapping her arms loosely around her waist. Mum wrapped her arms around Hermione and squeezed, rubbing her back soothingly.

"So shall I tell them you're up here packing?" Mum asked, sniffling as well.

"What am I going to do without you?" Hermione asked quickly, clinging to her mother. "You and Dad. You're so wise…You're the moral centre of the universe." Mum chuckled.

"Confidence; sweetheart. You have a good heart, and you've always had a strong conscience. Just be sure you use your head," Mum said, pressing her forehead to Hermione's. "You'll be fine." With that confident remark, her mum left the room, closing the door behind her like Hermione liked it. Shut, so she could have her privacy. Hermione had her doubts.

For one; her father was a reformed Death Eater. Secondly, she didn't even know her mother's first name. Thirdly, she had been her brother's academic rival for three years. That was all she knew about her family. _Still, it's a good start_, she thought, unlatching the trunk she usually kept hidden in her wardrobe in case one of the neighbours' kids came round and asked awkward questions about her 'love of antiques,' as her parents referred to her using quills and parchment and leather-bound books. She had flicked her wand and her books were tucking themselves orderly into the bottom of her trunk when her bedroom door opened.

"Not knocking any more?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder, expecting to see one of her parents. "Oh." It was Theodore.

"Sorry," he said awkwardly, hand fluttering on the door-handle. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah." Hermione nodded absently and continued to unpack her dresser, keeping her underwear and bras hidden from him. He might be her brother, but he was also a complete stranger. She heard a loud gasp and jumped, eyes wide, seeing Theodore holding _her_ little purple baby My Little Pony with a fro of orangey-pink hair and a little star fruit painted on its butt.

"_Who_ is this?" Theodore asked, his features lit up with incredulity as he stood over her bedside cabinet.

"No one. Never seen her before in my life," Hermione snapped. _Wash your mouth out!_ she gasped, horrified she was rejecting her pony.

"What's her name?" Hermione glared at Theodore; he smirked.

"Stussi!" Hermione snapped, snatching the plastic pony out of her brother's hands. "What are you _doing_ up here?"

"It was getting emotional down there. I thought I'd come up and help you pack. You listen to _Aerosmith_?" Theodore said incredulously behind her, and Hermione glanced over her shoulder to see him flicking through her box of records on the floor, at the foot of an overflowing bookcase emptying itself into the trunk, her record-player perched precariously on top.

"Steven Tyler _is_ God," Hermione remarked. Aerosmith, her dirty little secret. She _loved_ rock music. Sure, Elvis was good when she was in the mood to be serenaded, or when she wanted to prance around the house in her underwear and bake treats, but Aerosmith, she just _had_ to play the air-drums and bang her head and sing along as loud as she could.

"So you chose an ex-druggie-alcoholic for your idol," Theodore said thoughtfully. He glanced over his shoulder and smirked. "And here I had all this respect for you!"

"What do _you_ listen to?" Hermione asked accusingly.

"At the moment…Within Temptation. I love 'Memories'," Teddy said thoughtfully. "I don't know why, though." Hermione gawped.

"I listen to the same music as Theodore Nott," she said weakly, utterly disturbed. "I think I have to kill myself."

"Oh, it doesn't end there," Theodore said, grinning, as he reached for the shelf above her bed, which she usually had to stand on to get anything down, and retrieved three books in one of his large clever hands: The Vampire Chronicles. "Are you Louis or Lestat?"

"Maharet," Hermione said softly. She glanced at Teddy again and smiled softly. "You're Louis."

"Now why do you say that?" Teddy asked softly. She liked his voice. Deep, raw, soothing, at the same time. Hermione shrugged.

"You're just always on your own at school," she said softly. _Always the loner_, she thought. Teddy chuckled softly.

"Yeah. That's me; the lonely, romantic intellectual," Teddy said teasingly. "And what about you, hm? Do you want to know what I think of you?" Hermione didn't know if she wanted to hear his opinion, but they _were_ family, and she would be living with him for a while, so it was probably best to clear the air.

"Tell me." Teddy smiled softly, so that a tiny dimple winked in the right-hand corner of his mouth.

"I think you _are_ the smartest witch in our year," Teddy said thoughtfully. "And I think you have exceptionally good principles… I'm not sure you'd have such a strong conscience if you had been raised in our family, but perhaps that's a good thing."

"So you don't resent me?"

"Why would I resent you?"

"Well—I always beat you in Arithmancy scores," Hermione shrugged. Other than that, she couldn't think of any better reason, since they had such sparse contact with each other.

"By half a point!" Teddy said indignantly. "Anyway, you put a lot of effort into your work."

"And you don't?"

"Not really. It just helps that we have a lot of dunces in our year," Teddy smirked. He sat down cross-legged on her bed, watching her pack away more of her books. "You know, you don't have to do this if you don't really want to."

"But I do," Hermione said, surprising herself. She glanced at Teddy; he was examining her Build-a-Bear honey-bear, who wore a sweet blue-green-and-yellow gingham dress and ribbons on her ears, and frowned bemusedly at her. "Mum and I talked about it, and a lot of the things she said make sense."

"Like what?"

"Like…like how she knows it's difficult for me, being the only witch in the family. They don't exactly understand everything…hardly anything, actually," Hermione said sadly. "Especially now, when I'm so close to my N.E.W.T.s and working. They wouldn't know where to start in helping me look for a job, or choose a career. I think being with your family…our family, I don't know. It would make a lot of things a lot easier."

"Good. I mean—we wouldn't have wanted you to live with us if it made you unhappy," Teddy said softly, handing her Shirley—the bear—and picking up the baby-blanket Hermione had had since her parents 'brought her home from the hospital'. And Baby, the little plastic doll six inches tall with two great dreadlocks spiked into horns, completely naked. The toys were all stuffed down the side of her Ikea daybed, filling the gap between the mattress and the wall so she didn't have to worry about hands creeping up from under the bed and grabbing her in the night.

"So where do you live, anyway?" Hermione asked curiously. It might help to know a little bit about where she was going to be living.

"We have an estate in Derbyshire," Teddy said, smiling. "At Christmastime it always snows, and the lake freezes over and—well, one year Dad _completely_ wiped-out when he was ice-skating." His deep laugh resonated in her small bedroom. "And Mummydear has a walled rose-garden she tends herself. She loves that garden." Hermione loved roses. Peonies more, and freesias, but she loved roses too. She got an image in her head of her mother—the stunning blonde downstairs—dressed in a delicate lace tea-gown, perhaps a wide-brimmed hat perched on her head, shielding her delicate complexion from the sun, as she cut roses for a vase in her dressing-room.

"Do you always go home for Christmas?"

"Always. Mummydear makes the best mince-pies," Teddy smiled. _Mummydear!_ She shook her head slightly and smiled, and Teddy glanced at her as she sat down beside him on the bed, hands resting in her lap. She played absent-mindedly with the plain pale-gold bangle on her right wrist.

"What are they like?" she asked softly, her voice almost hoarse.

"Who? Our parents?" Teddy said quietly. He nudged her playfully and smiled. "I don't know really. Well, I suppose I _do_. Dad likes to laugh. All the time. And Mummydear likes pretty things, and she likes to paint and cook and if you'll let her she'll buy the whole of Peony Crescent for your wardrobe." Hermione laughed softly. Peony Crescent was one of the—well, the _only_ real centre of couture boutiques for the magical lady of Society.

"You don't have to buy me anything," Hermione said nervously, heat flushing her face. Teddy smiled.

"I know. Seems to me you already have your own personal library—oh! Peter Rabbit!" he gasped and squirmed gleefully as he opened the pages of Apply Dapply's Nursery Rhymes.

"You know Peter Rabbit?" She was already a little bit thrown off that her pureblood family knew Muggle culture—she had to stop herself from thinking of William as a 'Death Eater' only, because he had bared his forearms downstairs—his very, um, _unique_ personal style, mirroring rock-stars—and showed no sign of tattoos other than his wife's name scrawled in elegant cursive over a banner that flitted in a gentle breeze across a rose-flower on his right forearm. _What did it say…what did it say?_ She thought desperately, trying to remember. It had begun with a P; she had gleaned that much from a quick flit of her eyes over the tattoo.

"Purebloods _can_ be interested in Muggle things," Teddy said, with a heavy sigh, closing the little book. "Even if they _are_ Death Eaters," he added, even quieter. Hermione resisted shivering.

"The elephant in the room," she said quietly, and Teddy made a soft, thoughtful noise.

"We're not as bad as everyone thinks," Teddy said quietly. "My dad was younger when he took the Mark. His parents had both been killed when he was really young, so he didn't have anyone to raise him with good ethics. This time around, he didn't have any choice but to protect his assets." Hermione could understand that. Of course, that's what Harry said Draco Malfoy was doing in acting under the Mark; protecting his mother's life. Hermione admired that, a little bit.

"And what about you? Harry says you never took the Mark," Hermione said, and Teddy scoffed softly.

"No, I never took it. I may be in Slytherin, but when you grow up in that House, it's…well, you grow up quickly or you don't survive. Just because I was in that house doesn't mean I agree with the ideology behind it. I'm a—_we_ are purebloods by birth, and I was too young to know any better."

"Sometimes I suppose it's easier to keep your head down and stay silent," Hermione mused.

"Sometimes," Teddy agreed glumly. Hermione glanced at him, at the handsome features that were drawn with what she recognised easily as sadness.

"But it sure is lonely all by yourself," she said softly. She could remember back to the beginning of first year when the boys had scorned her for being so stuck up, and when Ron wasn't talking to her…well, she didn't know what she'd do if she didn't have her boys, and Ginny, of course: Her one outlet of reality that kept her _sane_ when dealing with the completely _clueless_ boys. Teddy glanced at her slowly and nodded, playing with the stuffed green frog she slept with tucked to her chest every night. It had meant to be a gift to Ginny Weasley in her first year, but seeing how her poem to Harry had mortified her beyond words when it had been read out in front of a corridor-full of people, she had thought better of reminding her of _that_ humiliation and kept it for herself.

"Yeah. It is," he nodded. A few minutes of uncomfortable silence passed between them while her things hovered over to the trunk and packed themselves neatly and she glanced at her brother again. They had the same nose, but her jawbone was squarer than his smoothed bone structure. No girl looking at this boy could possibly look away again without gasping internally, all the air sucked from their lungs with yearning.

"Um…what is our mother's name?" Hermione asked, flushing deeply with embarrassment. Teddy didn't laugh.

"Phaedra," Teddy said, the word rolling off his tongue with obvious affection. _Phaedra. That's pretty_, she thought. Downstairs someone's deep laughter—the men's—roared and the women laughed softly. Hermione and Teddy glanced at each other, both wondering what was going on down there.

"Think they've spiked their tea?" Teddy asked confidentially, and Hermione laughed. When everything had miraculously packed neatly into her trunk, and with a last sweep of the room, the wardrobe and under the bed, Hermione exited the bedroom and Teddy helped her carry the trunk downstairs, fearing of using magic in front of her mum and dad, and to her absolute _horror_ she found her parents sitting on the larger sofa between William and P-Mummy going through painfully familiar photograph albums.

"Oh _no_!" She wailed and buried her face in her hands, and Teddy dove to the back of the sofa, leaning over Mum's shoulder to look at Hermione's baby-pictures from when she was a year-old, wearing nineties' floral dresses with her little tuft of curling pale brunette hair clipped in a little flowered hair-tie, feeding a dog-biscuit to Lucy, Nana Granger's over-excitable cocker-spaniel who had been put down after Nana had her series of heart-attacks when Hermione was seven, and the pictures of her in a tiny red and white-polka-dot swimsuit, sitting in the washing-basket and being doused with water from a watering-can in Nana's back-garden, thoroughly unimpressed with being soaked.

"Aw, you were so _cute_, Hermione," Teddy said, giving her a mischievous grin. "Do you have any copies we could take with us?"

"Hey, easy Teddy-bear, or we'll show Hermione _your _baby-pictures when we get home. And _yours_ move," William warned, and Teddy's eyes widened and he straightened up, averting his eyes from the photograph-album. Hermione smirked at Teddy, eager to see these threatening, moving baby-pictures.

"Oh. Hermione, you're…you're ready to go," Mum said, smiling. It was no different to her leaving for the Weasleys', as she had done every summer since first year.

"Well, I…maybe I could come home for Christmas…or the Easter holidays," Hermione said doubtfully.

"I don't think so, poppet," Dad chuckled light-heartedly. "We have something _else_ to tell you." Hermione glanced between them warily. What could they _possibly_ come up with now?

"You know we've always talked about selling this house and packing up the business when you left home, so we could do a bit of world-travelling," Mum said, and Hermione's heart sank heavily. "Who knew today would be that day!"

"Your Mum and I are…well, we're moving to Sydney," Dad announced, beaming excitedly. Hermione's jaw dropped.

"In _Australia_?" she gasped, horrified.

"That's right poppet," Dad smiled.

"But you must _promise_ us we'll still be invited to your wedding," Mum said seriously. Hermione rolled her eyes. For all her smarts, Mum still wanted to see Hermione settled down with a family as well as happy in her career choices. But she couldn't believe…well, she _could_; her parents had always wanted to go to Australia, on _holiday_, not to live! Her uncle lived out there and was always raving about it.

She saw so little of her parents outside of term-time she felt extremely guilty as she said her goodbyes. The Notts left the living-room and waited outside, by the sleek silver Mercedes they had arrived in, and Hermione only sniffled a little bit as she left the house. Mum crossed her arms over her chest and waved; Dad smiled and waved and put an arm around Mum's shoulders as Hermione buckled herself into the backseat of the Mercedes beside Teddy.

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**A.N**: Sorry it's taking so long, I just didn't want the chapters unbearably long to read, like mine usually are! I'll probably make them longer in later chapters though. Anyway, please review :)

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	4. Homecoming

**Disclaimer**: Uh. Duh!

**Author's Note**: Again, I will _beg_ you to post a review. They make my afternoons when I get home from sixth-form college!...I lead a very boring life out in the sticks :(

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"Are you sure this is what you want?" Phaedra asked softly, glancing back from the passenger seat. Hermione glanced at her parents, waving cheerily from the driveway, and glanced back at her mother, and nodded. Teddy, sprawled luxuriously in his oversized seat, nudged her leg with his foot and gave her a tiny smile, handing her a small novel; Jane Austen, _Pride and Prejudice_, and a very battered copy, but Hermione's favourite of the six novels. William drove away from the house at normal—_Muggle_—speed and out of the village, but as soon as they had cleared Martin's Lane he switched to the Wizard-mode and they zipped along the country lanes until they joined the blue-marked motorway up to Derbyshire.

"So, Hermione, what subjects do you take besides Arithmancy?" Phaedra asked interestedly, as she was in the best position to talk to her, as Hermione sat behind William.

"Everything except Divination," Hermione said, with a bite of contemptuousness towards the highly unpredictable subject. She liked things methodical, orderly.

"_Everything_?" Phaedra's large blue eyes popped out of her head. "What, _every _subject? How is that possible?"

"Well…" she glanced around. They _were_ her family, and she wanted to start things off completely truthful. "Professor McGonagall had to write a lot of letters to the Ministry, but I had a Time-Turner in third year that helped me get to all of my classes." Teddy's eyes expanded like their mother's did, only his eyes were hazel instead of blue.

"That must have been a _tad_ draining," William said, chuckling. "How did you come to stop taking Divination?"

"It was such a woolly subject," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose. "A load of rubbish, if you ask me, all guesswork and smokescreens."

"Your mind is better suited to more methodical subjects," William said appreciatively. "I took Divination, too. What a hoax! I swear I left that room high as a kite every lesson!"

"It's where he got his nickname 'Herbs,'" Teddy whispered, and Hermione giggled softly, glancing at her father's eyes in the rear-view mirror.

"What was that, Teddy?" William asked lightly.

"Nothing Dad," Teddy smirked, his cheeks going red.

"So which subjects are you continuing this year, Hermione?" Phaedra asked interestedly.

"Well, I'm definitely dropping Care of Magical Creatures," Hermione said, with a shudder remembering Blast-Ended Skrewts. Teddy did likewise in his seat.

"I heard Hagrid has a very…unusual teaching style," William said carefully.

"The hippogriffs in third year were absolutely amazing," Teddy said, awestruck. "And the Thestrals would have been wonderful, you know, if we could all actually _see_ them." Hermione glanced at her brother. Obviously he had been one of the ones to leave the castle during the Battle. She didn't blame him. All throughout the journey, they continued to ignore the Muggle traffic and conversation flowed freely after the first few textbook questions and a few uncomfortable silences, but by the time they neared Derbyshire they were all arguing good-naturedly about their favourite authors, historians, musicians, anything and everything, in conversation much more animated than with Charlie and Jean—_Mum and Dad_, she corrected herself mentally as she compared the ease with which she talked to William and Phaedra because they slipped from Muggle authors to Wizard historians and philosophers and alchemists seamlessly.

"Alright, here we are," William said, drawing their attention to the windows; the trees of the family's woodland had cleared and Hermione scooted closer to Teddy, peering through his window as William stopped the car, making it teeter on top of a soft hill. A lake glittered in the stunning ruby sunset, the lawn leading up to the most beautiful Victorian mansion she had ever seen, surpassing the sets of _Atonement_, perfectly tended and emerald-green, dotted with jewel-bright wildflowers.

"How do you like the house, Hermione?" Phaedra whispered, and Hermione couldn't suppress a smile. William and Teddy both chuckled softly as the car took them closer to the house, affording an excellent view of the surrounding woodlands and hills.

"Well, what do you all want for dinner tonight?" William asked, as Hermione's trunk hovered behind her as they walked to the front steps. The house was enormous, easily twenty times bigger than her parents' three-bedroom semi, and this was just the series of public rooms, not the living quarters in the wings behind. "We're having takeout. You pick, Hermione."

"Um…" She had no idea the Notts liked Muggle takeout. "I…I like Thai-food."

"Oh, there's a wonderful Thai-restaurant in town," Teddy said excitedly. Phaedra rolled her eyes, as William retrieved the takeout menus and placed an order at the restaurant to be collected by him in twenty minutes, using the magical telephone in the hallway connected to the Muggle network.

"The boys love their Thai, and curry, and Chinese, and fish and chips," Phaedra said softly, chuckling. "You'd never believe I cook them full meals every day. Come on, I'll show you to your bedroom." And, offering her hand to Hermione, she strolled leisurely up the _Titanic_-esque split staircase to the full gallery lined with portraits of the family. There were two wings, she was told, one for them—for her and Teddy's rooms—and another for William and Phaedra.

"This whole house is…amazing," Hermione said, scrutinising the subjects of every portrait as they passed along the corridor lined with expensive hand-woven imported rugs and exquisite antiques. Grimmauld Place was definitely _nothing_ to Ayden Estate. And Malfoy Manor had none of the home's beauty or warmth. And, Hermione was eternally grateful, there were no maniacal black-haired witches torturing her.

"I'm very glad you think so," Phaedra smiled warmly. "I was hoping you would like it, and that you will for a very long time."

Phaedra kept talking, about the family, about the estate, asking Hermione random questions, like how she liked her eggs cooked and if she liked peppermint creams, whether she preferred velvet or satin, where she had obtained the bangle on her wrist, remarking that she was such a tomboyish kind of girl who didn't care what other people thought of her appearance, in a good way, because she was apparently so focused on her studies, "beautifying your brain," Phaedra said, with a smile. They reached the end of a wide corridor lined with antique chairs and loveseats and fireplaces with two doors before them: as in Grimmauld Place, the doors had little plaques naming the occupants: on the left was Hermione, the left, Theodore.

The bedroom was lovely; pale gold wallpaper lined the tall walls, embellished by matte silver flowers, with matching drapes at the tall windows. Luxurious soft rugs of pale gold covered most of the parquet floor and the fireplace was of exceptionally deep, warm gleaming wood, matching the wall behind her as she walked into the bedroom which was lined with tall bookcases. There was even a moving _ladder_ to help her reach the top shelves! As well as the deep, lustrous gold, the room was made even warmer by the hints of deep blood-crimson scattered around the room; the decorative cushions on the queen-sized bed, the pillows on the comfy gold sofa in front of the fire, the lantern-shades of the oil-lamps on the lovely writing-desk, the lining of the cushion on her enormous bay-window.

"Do you like it?" Phaedra asked tentatively. Hermione smiled at her, the first real warm smile she'd been able to give since saying goodbye to her parents.

"It's beautiful. It's very like…"

"The Gryffindor common room," Phaedra smiled, nodding so the tousled curls bounced playfully on her shoulders. "We did a little reconnaissance. We're actually very…_proud_ that you are in Gryffindor. You may make our name respectable—but!" Phaedra's eyes widened and she twisted her hands together nervously. "We—well, I don't mean that—we would never ask you to change your name, Hermione!" Hermione smiled; Phaedra was nervous and embarrassed. "I should have phrased that a little better."

"I think I understand what you mean," Hermione said soothingly, and Phaedra relaxed, smiling.

"Good. Well. Shall I leave you to settle in for a few minutes? The writing-desk is fully-stocked, if you would like to start writing letters to your friends, you can borrow my owl—I notice you don't have your own," Phaedra said. "What is your cat's name?"

"Crookshanks," Hermione said, smiling at the little basket inside which Crookshanks was mewling piteously to be released. "Nobody at the Magical Menagerie wanted him so I took him in." She'd have much rather had an owl, but she loved Crookshanks. Her constant companion through the rough terrain. Phaedra left the room, smiling as she closed the bedroom door behind her, and as soon as the soft footfalls had ceased, Hermione glanced at the door on the right-hand wall and jerked it open.

This was a bathroom, with a door opposite hers: there was a walk-in shower, a Jacuzzi-bathtub sunk into the floor with a large window right over it with a view of the gentle river that trickled like a silver snake through the meadows, and a two-sink console with one sink completely empty except a silver toilette set on a silver tray. She made sure Teddy's door was locked before going to the loo and brushing up, flicking a soft horsehair hairbrush through her hair and brushing her teeth. She didn't know how long dinner would be, despite William arranging to collect the takeout—Phaedra said he usually stopped to chat with the restaurant owners—so she sat down at the lovely writing desk and pulled a sheet of hot-pressed paper out of a little drawer, dipped a crystal stylus into a little pot of ink and started a letter to Harry.

Someone knocked softly on the door. She glanced over her shoulder, wide-eyed, flicking her wand over the letter so the ink dried and she could stuff the paper into an empty drawer, and called a calm "Come in," before Teddy admitted himself into the room. She smiled, slightly relieved to see it was him.

"Hullo," he said pleasantly, strolling over to her, clad in only his jeans, a soft grey cashmere jumper and bare feet, running them over the soft rug as he stood with his hands in his pockets. "So you started writing a letter?" Hermione glanced at the drawer and nodded, tucking a stray strand of thick chestnut hair behind her ear, avoiding his eyes guiltily.

"I started to…but it all just sounds so…"

"Unreal," Teddy supplied, perching his butt on the edge of the desk. Hermione nodded, leaning her head on her hand and sighing, glancing up at her brother. She was definitely having misgivings, now that she was here, now that it was real.

"If I can't tell my friends…"

"You'll find the words," Teddy said soothingly, kneeling down beside her chair. He took a clean sheaf of hot-pressed paper out of the drawer and smoothed it out, handing her the stylus. "They're your best-friends. It doesn't matter what name you have; they'll love you anyway."

"Look at you, being all supportive to your…am I older or younger than you? Or are we twins or something?" Hermione asked, bemused, frowning at her brother. She'd never spoken two words to Teddy at school; she'd never wanted nor needed to, so she wouldn't have paid attention to birthdays. Teddy chuckled softly and passed a hand through his hair in a very James Potter-like impersonation of embarrassment.

"Um…you're older," Teddy said, glancing at her awkwardly. "Your birthday is in September. Mine is in August. August the third." Hermione quickly did the maths in her head. September to August. _Eleven months_, she thought, squirming.

"Ew!" she said softly. "That's almost…"

"Indecent?" Teddy nodded. "Yes, I think it is. Witches' bodies heal much quicker because of our magical advances in Healing, anyway."

"I was thinking of the emotional implications…So soon after a stillborn child…" Hermione said softly, and cringed, shivering. She would probably take a lifetime to get over it if she gave birth to a dead child, or an ill child at that. She would never be able to forgive herself.

"For heaven's sake don't ask Dad about it; he'll just say 'Your mummy's a hottie, and I got her'," Teddy said quickly, doing an uncanny impression of their dad, who was of the character that appeared drunk when he wasn't and appeared completely sober when he was; he was high on life.

"Well she is!" Hermione and Teddy glanced at each other, preventing themselves from laughing in surprise, when William appeared in the doorway. He gave them one of his patented grins, the teeth that reminded Hermione so much of her own smile glittering in the lamplight. "Dinner's ready. I _slaved_ away over hot takeout containers."

"We appreciate your efforts, Dad," Teddy said sarcastically, helping Hermione out of her seat, and William chuckled.

"Well, it's the best we could do tonight, and it's the house-elves' night off," William said, and of course, Hermione's interest perked right up.

"You have house-elves?" she said weakly. _OH NO!!! HYPOCRACY!!!! At least you can call yourself a blood-traitor. Ginny'll love that!_

"Well, yes, _we_ have three, _but_," William said quickly, as Hermione opened her mouth and Teddy gave him a look, "we freed them two years ago. Now they each get paid ten sickles a week and have Friday evenings and weekends off." Hermione closed her mouth, impressed, and smiled at her father. "So, tell me about SPEW."

"It's not Spew! It's the Society for the Promotion of—!" Hermione stopped her indignant tirade when she realised she wasn't talking to Ron or Harry, but that her dad really _did_ want to know about Elfish Welfare. And Teddy seemed interested too, and they talked about the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare until they reached the kitchen, in which the family predominantly ate because the room was cosier than the high-ceilinged public rooms. There was no precedent for dinnertime; the takeout containers were set on the marble-topped island in the centre and the family grabbed plates and took whatever they wanted—and squabbled over what they didn't get—and sat at the island teasing each other as naturally as if they were just…really good _friends_.

"You'd never guess they have three-course dinners prepared for them every night," Phaedra said, watching her husband and son tussle over the last of the Singapore noodles. "Anyone would think they were raised by wolves."

"We like takeout!" Teddy grunted, holding the container of noodles out of William's reach while William slapped his face playfully to distract him.

"Well, you had better watch out; Hermione is here now, we're on level-pegging: _I _am no longer in the minority. We won't be having curry four nights in a row," Phaedra said triumphantly, smirking, until the noodles tipped onto the floor and she rolled her eyes, sweeping up the mess with her wand while William wailed and Hermione stopped, standing above where the mess had been made and frowning. Phaedra smiled knowingly.

"You can use magic now, Hermione," she said softly, a dimple—_Teddy's dimple_—winking in her right cheek. Teddy grinned at her as Hermione slipped back onto her barstool, thinking. _I can do magic now. WHHEEEEEEEEE!!!!…I wonder if they—we—have a library…_

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**A.N.**: Tada! Here you go, _theotherchick_, another chapter due to yours being my 666th hit! Mwahaha! I was rather amused by that when I looked at the story stats! Thank you for your review, and also thank you to _spikeecat_, _Readerforlife_, _margaritama_, and _darklady41465_! I think this should answer a few of your concerns, if vaguely! Please tell me what you think! And thank you to everyone who has put me--or this story--on their Alert lists! Thank you!

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	5. The Malfoys

**Disclaimer**: Duh.

**Author's Note**: To all of you who have Alerted me, here's another chapter, and thank you for the kind reviews! I love 'em. I had to get my cogs churning out another chapter, because with this story I haven't really been writing chronologically; I write bits here and there and leave gaps. So I know what I'd like to happen, it may just take me a while to get there! Anyway, enjoy and please review!

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Hermione rolled over, and promptly fell out of bed with a _bang_ and a groan as she thoroughly winded herself, her arm tucked under her body, smacking her forehead on the carpet enough to feel like carpet-burn. _Ow_. She frowned down at the carpet. Hers was blue. This was gold. _Eh?_ She picked her head up and frowned around the room; _gold and red…school's not started yet. Oh, I understand. Dream…nice dream; I'm Head Girl. This must be my _private_ bedroom away from those featherbrained little—Oh, hang on!_ She saw the desk, once she had pulled herself up off the floor using the duvet, and the letter she had written last night to Harry, folded and sealed with the Nott family-crest in scarlet wax. A badger. Kind of like her, really; a slow fuse, very mellow, but boy when she got worked up about something: _BOOM_.

"Oh yeah," she said quietly, smiling softly as she looked around the room again. The wallpaper shimmered in the mid-morning sunlight as she opened the curtains onto a view of the lake and the trees and a few of the hills far off in the distance. _Wow_. Hermione wasn't one for enjoying nature—walking around in it, rather—but she loved enjoying views. And this; this was one of the best, behind the Hogwarts grounds, of course. Tugging her dressing-gown out of her trunk (which she hadn't unpacked last night for want of time before the effects of a full stomach of Thai and laughing at William and Teddy's squabbling taunts so hard her stomach hurt and tears rolled down her face had set in) she shuffled out of her bedroom and followed the path to the kitchen.

It was strange, seeing Phaedra and William bustling around the kitchen together, William feeding Phaedra a freshly-picked strawberry that went onto the plates of food they were preparing. At home—her _old_ home—her parents would already have left by the time Hermione woke up, which wasn't late, and busy all day until five o'clock. And Teddy was beaming and laughing as he flipped crepes in the air and caught them in the pan again, perfectly. The island was well-stocked with fresh fruit, boxes of breakfast cereals, even a can of Muggle _Ambrosia_ rice-pudding.

"Hey! There she is! Morning, Hermione," William beamed at her, handing Phaedra a plate of freshly-cooked crepes and strawberries, giving her a kiss on the lips that wasn't the 'hello, dear' kind of brush-off kiss before they both ran out the front-door.

"Hi," Hermione said shyly, settling on a barstool and watching Teddy flip another crepe. The most her dad could ever manage by way of flipping things was a home-prepared stir-fry from Sainsbury's, and even then he usually got most of the egg noodles over the electric hob.

"Are you alright?" Phaedra asked concernedly, cupping Hermione's forehead with a small frown. "You seem pale. Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, I did, thank you," Hermione smiled. "I haven't been outside very much this week; I've been reading too much."

"Ah, we don't understand that sort of thing here, do we boys?" Phaedra asked, and the two men, both busy with arranging their plates of breakfast, exchanged wide-eyed, innocent expressions. Teddy, she knew, was an incurable bookworm, from the number of times she had seen him in the library at Hogwarts.

"So how did you sleep; was the bed comfortable?" Phaedra asked again. She was probably just as nervous of having Hermione here as Hermione was of being there. Hermione smiled.

"Yes, it was wonderful. I'm just not used to sleeping in a bed that big," Hermione smiled softly. "I fell out." Teddy laughed and set a plate in front of her.

"We have chopped fruit, sugar and lemon, or if you're feeling very sinful, chocolate-spread," he smiled, pushing the offerings forward. Hermione smiled and took the lemon juice.

"Hermione, do you like steak?" William asked, digging through a drawer in the freezer of the industrial-sized chrome Viking fridge-freezer.

"Yes. Why?" Hermione asked.

"We're having company tonight," William sighed heavily.

"Oh _god_," Teddy wailed. "Who is it _this time_?"

"I'm sorry Teddy," William sighed heavily. "I couldn't help it."

"I don't understand why you have these people over for dinner," Teddy glowered. "You don't like them."

"I do not _don't_ like them," William said indignantly, glancing away from the freezer. "I grew up with these people. They're my oldest friends."

"Friends don't sit back and watch you get arrested," Teddy said tartly.

"No, they'd be sitting in the cell next to you," Hermione smiled. With everything she had gone through with Harry and Ron, she knew that if either of them had ever been arrested, she wouldn't settle to let it happen. She'd kick and curse her way into that jail-cell beside them. "Who's coming to dinner tonight?"

"The Malfoys," William sighed heavily, and Hermione choked on her crepe. Teddy thumped her on the back and she took a sip of freshly-pulverised pumpkin juice.

"Daddy, this whole evening is just going to turn into a political debate between _you_ and Lucius Malfoy," Teddy said. "And we're going to be the ones to suffer for it."

"My darling boy, you do not know that," William said, giving Teddy a look. "I did not make 900-million galleons from being a pessimist." Hermione choked again. _900_…she gaped, breathless, at her father. _900…million_…

"Went down the wrong hole?" Phaedra said, rubbing her back comfortingly. _The Malfoys_…The last time she'd seen the Malfoys, really _seen_ them, had been in their own drawing-room. They hadn't tortured her, and though she could understand their position, they hadn't exactly jumped in to defend her. _Imagine if Bellatrix Lestrange and Volde—_she shook her head slightly. She could never imagine Voldemort alive again, but the thought of how shocked they would have been, how much Bellatrix would have been punished for torturing the pureblooded daughter of one of her fellow Death Eaters, made Hermione feel a little better about that whole situation.

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"Draco is going to be _sick_ when he finds out," Teddy chortled darkly, scribbling a note in the margin of his thin book, dipping his crystal stylus into a tiny inkpot. He sat in one of Hermione's armchairs, an ankle propped on his knee, smoking a cigarette quite lazily, eyes following the tiny print. Hermione cringed guiltily.

"Please don't make a…a big deal out of this," she said quietly, and Teddy laughed softly. "Their family is already under enough pressure from guilt—"

"Requires a conscience, Hermione," Teddy said, glancing at her from his book. Hermione gave him a look.

"Please, promise me. I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable," Hermione said sadly. _More uncomfortable_, she thought. She knew they couldn't possibly be on _friendly_ terms, thrown into the same dining-room together, but she hoped at least her nerve wouldn't fail her and she could be civil. And that she could get away with saying as little to Draco Malfoy as she could.

* * *

"Jesus!" She curled up, knees to her chest, as the bathroom door opened and Teddy emerged.

"Relax, it's only me," Teddy said lazily, sitting down on the closed toilet. "Don't tell me, you're a convent girl? Or is that Presbyterian modesty?" Hermione rolled her eyes: if there was one thing apart from exploitation of minorities that could get her going in an argument, it was religion, which was basically just a history of that very same thing she stood up against.

"Teddy, what are the Malfoys _really_ like?" Hermione asked. She'd been trying to figure it out all day. Harry said that Narcissa Malfoy had forfeited everything to find her son, and that Draco was being threatened with the murder of his mother so he would act for Voldemort, and Lucius…well, Harry didn't know much about Lucius Malfoy.

"What you'd expect, really," Teddy shrugged. "Typical family of rich people used to getting their own way. Cissy's alright, though; she's lovely. If Lucius Malfoy hadn't been on the scene, if he'd been imprisoned after the first war, Draco wouldn't have turned out the way he did. Well, that's what Mummydear says, anyway. Dad agrees with her." Yes, Hermione had suspected Narcissa Malfoy had to be the better influence in Draco's upbringing, considering the way Lucius Malfoy behaved with others and with his own family—she could remember Lucius all but bullying Draco in front of other people.

"Do you think it's possible…" she trailed off, frowning at the painted ceiling.

"What?" Teddy prompted.

"Do you think it's possible they really have…_changed_?" Hermione asked, feeling guilty asking it. She didn't like thinking the worst of people, but after what she had endured, well, it was difficult not to see Bellatrix where Narcissa was mentioned. They were sisters, after all. _So were Sirius and Regulus: Look how differently they turned out_, she thought. _Not so different; Regulus was disillusioned in the end_.

"I think there's a capacity in everyone to do the right thing," Teddy said diplomatically. "Narcissa, yes, I know from personal experience she is _good_, as you'd say. And Draco's never been…well, Dad says he was too young and too conscientious to be a truly loyal Death Eater."

"And by 'loyal', you mean subservient and unquestioning," Hermione added. Teddy nodded. "Harry says Draco was being threatened with his mother's death if he didn't do what Lord Voldemort told him to." Teddy shivered slightly and winced; Hermione rolled her eyes.

"I can believe that. Draco loves his mother more than anything in the world," Teddy said thoughtfully, going to the small cupboard on his side of the bathroom. He kept several pressed shirts in there; it was an airing cupboard and wonderfully warm. "Well, he should; she's the only person he's ever been close with. She's his best-friend."

"Kind of like you and Dad," Hermione remarked, and Teddy shot her a smile from his cupboard. "Is it a mark of a pureblood family, do you think; closeness with your family-members?"

"I wouldn't think so," Teddy said thoughtfully. "Your Weasley family all love each other immensely."

"Yes…Sometimes I think we love _too much_," Hermione said quietly.

"Well, I would rather love too much than not at all," Teddy said wistfully, with a sad smile.

"Have _you_ ever been in love?" Hermione asked interestedly, watching her brother tie a deep navy silk tie around his neck. He tied it, loosed it, and lifted it carefully over his head.

"No. Have you?" She loved Harry and Ron more than anything in the world, but had she ever been _in_ love? No. She was only sixteen, though, so she had her entire life for that sort of thing.

"No. And I don't need a boyfriend to make me happy, unlike some tomato-haired girls who shall remain nameless," Hermione said, seething as she swatted at some of the thick bubbles topping her bath. Ginny Weasley went from boy to boy almost every fortnight, leaving destruction and broken-hearts behind with no thoughts for _their_ happiness, just her own. It was no wonder, really, that Harry had broken up with _her_ when he found out she had had sex with Seamus _and_ Zacharias Smith while they were gone from Hogwarts. Teddy chuckled.

"You're alluding to the famous Miss Weasley," he remarked, smirking, as he picked out a pale blue shirt from the rack.

"Infamous is more like it," Hermione growled.

"Pretty girls can get anything they want in life, as long as they know how to embrace their assets," Teddy said sagely, sliding his eyes over her face. "Take you for example—"

"_Me_?" Hermione spluttered a laugh.

"Yes, you: I'll bet you anything that if you had worn a lower-cut top and put on a bit of lipstick, you'd have all the boys at Hogwarts _running_ to join S.P.E.W. But you don't. You think too much of yourself to degrade your character like that." (YES, that is an intended dig at the FanFic AU Hermione Grangers out there).

"You really think that of me?" Hermione asked, a little disconcerted. Only Viktor had ever told her outright that she was pretty; she'd blushed, embarrassed, and then he'd curled a finger under her chin and given Hermione her first kiss. As much as she wasn't a girly-girl, she liked kissing like the next hormones-driven tart. She just never got the opportunity to do it because she preferred to read and study than spend that time in front of a mirror.

"Everybody does—well, sometimes not in such _favourable_ phrasing. In Blaise Zabini's immortal words: 'What a waste of boobs'." Hermione laughed out-loud, ducking further under the water, which was covered with half a foot of thick bubbles that smelled like roses and freesias.

"He said that?" Teddy nodded. "My boobs are not _that_ impressive," she said, glancing down at her chest, hidden as it was by bubbles. She was only a C-cup. Average. "I thought he was difficult to impress."

"He _is_," Teddy chuckled deeply. "I think Blaise is probably the only person in the world who could look upon a Veela and see a Banshee." Hermione laughed. "All the boys have noticed you, Hermione; they're just too intimidated to talk to you because you're so smart. Boys like 'em dumb."

"Is that the kind of girl you like, because I know Daphne Greengrass is the prettiest girl in Slytherin," Hermione smirked. _And that's not saying much_, she added spitefully. Daphne used to tease Hermione about her hair.

"Oh, Duckface? God no; I wouldn't go near her with a ten-foot broomstick," Teddy said, animating his eyebrows the way Hermione could. "She's too cold and insipid for my liking."

"You like a girl with fire?"

"Character," Teddy corrected. "I'd like to meet a girl who…has her own mind and doesn't care what people think, and is marvellously kind," his deep voice gentled with wistfulness. "She'll always know how to have fun but she'll know when something is wrong."

"Sounds like you've got your dream-girl all figured out," Hermione smiled warmly. Teddy nodded, facing the mirror, in front of which he was shaving, his eyes downcast and sad, _lonely_. Teddy had always been the isolated intellect; nobody bothered to speak to him when he sat alone, reading, in the courtyard, because of the colour of his tie. He never bothered to speak to anyone in Slytherin because, as he told Hermione, he thought they were all narrow-minded, arrogant snobs who were more use to occupy Azkaban's cells than positions in the Ministry. Hermione had been right; Teddy _was_ Louis from _Interview with the Vampire_: he was the romantic, passionate loner. As soon as Teddy had left the bathroom with his shirt and pre-tied tie, Hermione jumped out of the bath and wrapped herself in the enormous fluffy sheet-towel hanging on the heated rack, and padded into her bedroom in her slippers, shivering from the change of temperature.

She hadn't anticipated having to see the Malfoys so quickly after moving here. To be particularly honest, she'd not thought about anything really upon moving here except the fact that it was her choice, and now the Grangers were packing up everything to do a world-tour, so she couldn't change her mind and disappoint both sets of parents. But now the looming threat of having to eat dinner at the same table as Draco Malfoy was all too real as she glanced at the carriage-clock atop her dressing-room mantelpiece. It was easy for Teddy: he said the Malfoys came over at least once every fortnight, and the invitation was always returned for the next week for their family to visit Malfoy Manor, but Hermione didn't anticipate those invitations including _her_ any time soon, considering they all thought she was Muggleborn scum.

Draco Malfoy had always made her nervous, and for reasons she couldn't quite explain, she found herself later that afternoon standing in front of the full-length mirror in her dressing-room. The five outfits she had already tried and tossed were scattered across the soft gold carpet and on the antique chaise, and she frowned, hands on her cinched waist, as she examined the little dress her mum had bought her when they went on holiday for two weeks in America. It was strapless, mid-thigh in length with a slight sweetheart neckline, and had a taupe satin slip beneath a layer of black lace that was drawn to the left side, where the zip was concealed. She liked that she didn't have to wear a bra with it because the bodice was lightly boned and it made her legs look longer. _Curse Teddy!_ He, William and Phaedra were all tall, slender, and beautiful. Hermione was slender, and once or twice people had called her pretty—she didn't think it _really_ counted if it was her mum saying it!—but _tall_ she was not. She was average-height, average-weight, with average-sized boobs, even if they did look very nice pushed up slightly by the bodice.

"What do you think?" Hermione asked nervously, smoothing the front of the dress. She didn't dress up often, and when she did she always felt self-conscious.

"You look very pretty," Teddy smiled. He had changed his shirt and tie; deep blood-red silk shirt, and a matching silk tie that had tiny polka-dots on it. "Turn around." She spun slowly for him, and met his smile when she went full-circle.

"Now I just have to do something with my _hair_," Hermione growled, jutting her jaw and grabbing a lock of her thick, rambunctious chestnut hair. Teddy chuckled.

"Come here," he smiled, smacking her butt playfully to move her out of the way of his bathroom door, and he squatted down in front of the cupboards beneath the console. "Mummy stocked this whole place with a load of girly stuff from Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes—I swear that place is heaven on Earth—and I _think_—aha! Yes, here it is." He produced a jar of _Wonder Witch_ hair-smoothing serum. "You know…I think Mummy would really like it if you asked her to help you get ready. She doesn't get to do that sort of thing normally." Hermione took the jar and smiled nervously. Jean Granger could yank your teeth out without you even feeling it, but ask her to do a French plait and you'd be asking _too much_. One reason Hermione was so studious was because her parents were; there was little leniency in learning the finer points of makeup application or dressing to suit your figure. Mrs Weasley had adopted Hermione like a second daughter because she only had Ginny, and she had graved daughters, so that's where a little bit of Hermione's limited femininity came from.

Phaedra was sitting in her dressing-room, which was a larger version of Hermione's in shimmering pearly pinks rather than gold, and absolutely _stuffed_ with magnificent robes, casual-wear, and…_shoes_, Hermione breathed, every atom in her body charged when she saw her mother's shoe collection; it covered one vast wall with little cubby-holes for each pair. Slippers, flats, sandals, pumps, wedges, stilettos, boots, every colour under the sun. Had Hermione been a more feminine girl she would have built up her shoe-collection. As it was, her parents had never seen any reason to build up her casual wardrobe if she had a school-uniform, so she'd never had much money to spend on things like cute underwear she'd seen in LaSenza or even a cheap throwaway pair of shoes from New Look. Phaedra was sitting at her dressing-table, drawing a horsehair hairbrush through her silky blonde hair.

"Hello Hermione," she smiled.

"Hi. Teddy showed me the way here," Hermione smiled nervously. "Um, I was wondering if you could do my hair?" Phaedra's smile was more than enough of an incentive to do these little things Teddy suggested to make her mother happy. She even tolerated the half-hour it took Phaedra to settle decisively on one hairstyle; hair parted over her left eye, her thick fringe swept to the side, Hermione's hair was braided and coiled into a lovely bun at the base of her neck, fastened in place with a tiny slim diamond pin Phaedra said she could keep, because it was so striking against her dark hair. Hermione touched her hair nervously. She wasn't used to having her hair up. There was a draught around her ears.

"Thank you," she smiled.

"And what about shoes?" Phaedra asked thoughtfully, more to herself, and in a second she was whisking through her shoe-collection. Hermione was about to say she had shoes in her room, but they were boring black ballet flats she'd had two years and were getting really scruffy, and Phaedra was having much too much fun, she didn't have the heart to disappoint her. _This woman is craving female companionship_, Hermione thought, with a soft sigh. She smiled as Phaedra produced a pair of Mary-Jane's with thick stacked heels and a big decorative button on the thick strap across her foot. _Hey, I can walk in these_, Hermione thought, elated. She could not walk in stiletto-heels to save her life, and it annoyed her because she was so short compared to Harry and Ron. Usually she settled for wearing a pair of heeled black cowboy boots.

Teddy and Hermione were both downstairs, arguing over Charles Dickens, when the doorbell rang, and Teddy cringed visibly as he hugged a cushion from the sofa in the lovely drawing-room and curled up on the seat, trying to make himself as small as possible.

"You promise, remember, you promise you won't make a big deal of me being here," Hermione said to him, as Phaedra called them to greet their guests in the hallway. Phaedra heard them talking and smiled serenely as their guests crossed the threshold. _Wow_. Hermione's stomach did a weird flippity-flop thing that wasn't entirely unpleasant as she forgot almost to breathe: Draco Malfoy. He'd grown even taller, if that was possible, and his hair had gained a wholesome golden colour rather than his father's silvery-blonde. He looked more like his mother, especially with his smooth cheeks, sculpted jaw, straight nose, the lips that had so often taunted her pulled up at the corners in a tiny smile as he bent to hug Phaedra and kiss her cheek. It was his eyes, though, that had made the most remarkable change. No longer were they slits of ice, impenetrable. Hermione thought she was looking at Harry, if only because the inner turmoil seeped out through those two exquisite sapphire windows.

"I hope you don't mind, but we have another dinner-guest this evening," Phaedra smiled, and she doubted the Malfoys could have minded when her face glowed like that. "May I introduce Hermione Granger?" Hermione had been watching Draco as he took his jacket off for William; his eyes popped and he glanced quickly at Hermione. Teddy touched her wrist lightly and gave her a smirk, for a reason she didn't understand. Draco stripped his jacket off and handed it to William, and the older Malfoys both looked at Hermione. Mrs Malfoy moved with so much elegance it was almost annoying to see how she slid out of the pure white mink coat, revealing stunning lilac dressrobes, and Mr Malfoy eyed her up appraisingly as he took his cape off and handed it to William.

"Hello Hermione," Draco said softly, and Hermione couldn't help but smile nervously as the corners of his mouth lifted ever-so-slightly in a tiny smile.

"Miss _Granger_, yes? I have it to understand that you are on the forefront of elfish rights," Mr Malfoy said neutrally. "I should be delighted to hear your views on the subject." Hermione flitted her eyes over Draco before glancing back at Mr Malfoy. She smiled slightly and followed Mr Malfoy into the drawing-room.

It wasn't as awkward or as painful as Hermione had anticipated. Actually, she rather enjoyed herself. The Malfoys could be…_jovial_, laughing as loud as William, when they were amongst people they considered equal to them. Hermione thought the Notts far superior, but that was only because she knew too much of the Malfoy heir to remain objective. She and Mr Malfoy began a heated debate that lasted until dinner was served. She had Teddy on her side though, and Draco made a few poignant remarks in her favour, but for most of the evening he remained silent. Staring at her.

William had been cooking, as the house-elves did not work on the weekends, and the steak was excellent, juicy and tender as she liked it, with sautéed potatoes and fresh vegetables. The dining-room was exquisitely finished with duck-egg silk on the walls and matching upholstery on the Louis XV furniture, with a lot of gilt everywhere, and mirrors, and the crystal chandelier above only served as a reminder to Hermione of Malfoy Manor. Draco kept glancing at it, and at her, and though he didn't say anything, his eyes—eyes which had normally never betrayed anything but deep-seated anger—were animated, intense, conveying more urgency than any tone of voice could have resonated.

The evening ended after midnight, after they had all played cards or board-games in the drawing-room and the 'men-folk' had gone to William's study to smoke cigars and bemoan today's politics. Phaedra and Narcissa had been gossiping and giggling all evening and Hermione wasn't into that kind of thing, so she had played Monopoly with Draco and Teddy. Monopoly, she found out, was played every time the two families got together, and the game hadn't ended for three months. It was interesting to see the boys squabble good-naturedly over mortgages and hotels and tussle over the banker cheating them their 200 sickles, and it was interesting to see the Monopoly set William had altered to Wizarding streets and companies, and what he'd written on the Chance cards.

_All in all, that wasn't a bad night_, she thought, lying on her bed and frowning up at the ceiling thoughtfully. _It could have gone a _lot_ worse_, she thought. But the Malfoys had been remarkably…kind to her. They asked the same sorts of questions Phaedra had yesterday afternoon and generally seemed interested in being nice to her. Draco hadn't said much, and what he had said was spoken so softly she might have missed it if his voice didn't have that deep timbre like Teddy's. Whatever he did say was either in Hermione's favour or neutral, to stop the argument over Muggleborn rights between her and Mr Malfoy. _It's not like him to back down from an argument_, she thought. _Maybe he's changed_.

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**A.N.**: Tada! Another chapter. Sorry there's not much dialogue at the dinner-party. Kind of wanted to convey how there would have been a lack of communication between Hermione and the Malfoys except the arguments, and how weird it would have been for the Malfoys to have seen Hermione after they saw her tortured... Is that a good excuse? Anyway, please review!

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	6. The Rodeo!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own HP.

**Author's Note**: This chapter is for all you _seventy-one _Alert people I have waiting, and thanks to all of you who have reviewed! Enjoy!

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It was strange: Hermione had been at 'home' for three days now, well, including her first afternoon at home, and yet she still couldn't send a letter to Harry. She'd written and sealed several versions, but none of them were…right. The structure of the letters was always the easiest; she was adopted. William and Phaedra Nott were her birth-parents, and Theodore Nott her brother with eleven months between them. She was now living with the Notts in Derbyshire. But bulking up the letter, telling him how it had all happened, what this meant, wasn't easy. She was normally so _good_ at writing; Ron always complained at the length of her letters because he said his responses seemed inadequate.

So, Tuesday morning found her sitting at her dressing-table and glaring at her reflection, hands clasped around her face, squishing it in different expressions. Teddy and William had gone out, supplying suspiciously few details as to their whereabouts, and Phaedra was calling on one of her friends. Hermione had chosen to stay at home. She'd spent an hour wandering around the house memorising the floor-plan. She thought she had it all figured out now; she knew where the kitchen was, and she was making her way through the books in William's working-study. After dinner the boys liked to sit in the study and read, sip port—well, William did. Like Hermione, Teddy didn't like the taste of alcohol—and smoke a cigar each—Phaedra only ever allowed them to do this on Saturday evenings, as she disliked the smell of cigar smoke. Hermione had to agree with her on _that_ account. After dinner for the ladies, Hermione and Phaedra sat in the drawing-room, which was the loveliest room in the house, with rusty-pink walls and a sinuously-carven Maplewood balcony, bearskin rugs on the floor and full-length windows overlooking the lake. Hermione usually read; Phaedra's elegant fingers were always busy with something pretty; she made the loveliest blouses and skirts and dressrobes, in a style which Hermione's Muggle upbringing would call Early-Edwardian, and was exquisitely elegant.

Her bedroom was getting to look more like _hers_, with all of her books unpacked into the bookcases with photographs of her parents, Ron and Harry, Ginny, the DA, the Order, her vinyls spread out on the coffee table in front of the fire, her clothes scattered everywhere around her room and dressing-room. She had been given access to Teddy's stash of books and liked reading the notes he scribbled in the margins. His writing was tiny, like hers, but almost unintelligible, and their brains seemed to work the same ways.

One of Teddy's books and one of her unfinished letters to Harry lay open on her dressing-table amidst the silver toilette-set, and she glared down at the letter. _If you can't even tell Harry and Ron, how are you supposed to tell the rest of the world?_ she thought, with a heavy, constricted sigh. It was infuriating her; she wasn't normally the one who had trouble communicating. Harry was the worst. She had gone to her desk and dipped the stylus in the ink when the doorbell rang. She jumped up smiling, glad there was an excuse not to dwell on her letters again, and ran through the house.

Someone was already talking in the hallway when she ran to the top of the split-staircase and she almost laughed. Thimbletack had already beaten her to the door and invited the houseguest in. Draco Malfoy glanced up, hearing her footsteps, and she slowed as she walked down the stairs. _Why didn't you put some trousers on?_ she thought angrily, flashing her bare legs where her little Daisy Dukes stopped short at upper-thigh. _At least you're wearing a sensible top!_ She played with the hem of her t-shirt nervously as she reached the bottom step.

"Master Malfoy to see you, Miss," Thimbletack smiled.

"Thank you, Thimbletack," Hermione smiled, flushing as Draco's eyes roved unashamedly over her bare legs. _Thank god you shaved last night_, she thought, reconsidering her views on Muggle spas and the appealing benefits of waxing.

"I didn't know the rodeo was coming into town," Draco smiled. _Smiled_, not smirked. He was amused to see her dressed in Daisy Dukes, her favourite black cowboy-boots, and a bright fuchsia top that had a graphic of '_Lollipop_' scrawled over the front.

"I'm not used to having someone wait on me," Hermione mumbled, glancing towards where Thimbletack had disappeared. "I would have changed clothes if I'd remembered." There was an uncomfortable silence and Hermione looked around the hallway, finally landing her eyes on Draco. He looked really…_Yummy_, she moaned wistfully. He had shot up another few inches since May, practically looming over her a head and a half taller. He was wearing a forget-me-not-blue t-shirt that fit his lean, toned torso perfectly and made his eyes _pop_, a pair of dark distressed jeans and scuffed brown leather boots. He had to push his hair out of his eyes—he had grown it long, lazily falling over his shoulders and into his eyes—and Hermione realised she liked it like this. He looked _scrumptious_.

"So…what are you doing here?" she asked quietly, trying not to sound rude. He _had_ come over here, after all.

"Um…I just wanted to…I wanted to talk to…Is Theo here?" Draco asked, and he actually blushed when he made eye-contact with her.

"No, he's out with William," Hermione said.

"Oh." Draco glanced around the hallway, hands clasped behind his back.

"Is Phaedra at home?"

"No, she's gone to visit some friends," Hermione said. _Obviously you don't want to talk to me_, she thought, sliding her eyes over Draco. He looked flustered, more than anything.

"Um…So how long are you staying here?" Draco asked, after some deliberation, his cheeks flushed.

"All summer, I expect," Hermione smiled softly. Draco nodded. He fumbled with something in the leather-bound journal he carried under his arm, and produced a small worn book, a quarter of an inch thick, with a brown, gold-embellished cloth cover.

"Would you please give this back to Theo for me? He let me borrow it; I've only just finished reading it," Draco said softly, handing her the book with his left hand. She noted his bare forearm, where once the Dark Mark had charred his skin quite dead. She took the book; Shakespeare, a copy of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and nodded. She _loved_ Shakespeare.

"Did you like it?" she asked, waving the book. Draco smiled, showing glittering straight white teeth. Her mother would have loved his smile.

"I loved it."

"I would never have taken you for a fan of Shakespeare," Hermione said thoughtfully. Draco shrugged.

"Well… Can you just tell Theo I stopped by?" Draco said softly. Hermione smiled and nodded. He rubbed his palms against his jeans and waved slightly as he turned to the door. He had reached the threshold when he turned and twisted the hem of his t-shirt nervously. Now Hermione was feeling confident that he was further away and he was the one glancing around like a caged rabbit.

"I…I just wanted to say… Well…" he stammered nervously, and Hermione bit her lip. She'd never seen him nervous before: _This is fun_, she thought, her mouth twisting with a smile she tried very hard to conceal from him. He looked a little bit pained as he frowned down at his shoes and glanced up at her, his cheeks flushed. "I wanted to…to apologise… I'm sorry. I'm sorry for…for the way Bellatrix Lestrange treated you at Easter, and I'm sorry for the other things to. I'm sorry for everything I said to make you upset in the past." Hermione narrowed her eyes, arms folded over her chest. "I…I always knew what I was doing was wrong, treating you like that, but I always thought…I always thought that my father knew me better than I do and what he told me to do was always right. I now know that I was wrong."

"So you think that just saying you're sorry for five years of bullying is going to make up for it!" Hermione snapped indignantly. "You think you can come here and just stand there and apologise, and that'll make everything okay. It's _not_ okay. If you think you can earn my friendship because I'm Teddy's sister, and the _only reason_ you're apologising is because you've found out I'm a pureblood, then I don't _want_ it." Having him apologise to her now that he knew she was a pureblood was as bad as him never apologising with the knowledge that she was a Muggleborn.

"You're Theo's sister?"

"What?" She had lost her train of thought, glaring at Draco's stunned expression.

"You said that you are Theo's sister."

"Oh. Didn't you… You didn't know," Hermione said weakly. _Idiot_, she thought, her cheeks flushing hotly. So she'd shouted at him for no reason.

"Know what?" Draco asked interestedly, cocking his head to one side.

"That I'm a pureblood," Hermione said. She played with her trembling fingers.

"You're a…" Hermione sighed heavily and sat down on the stairs, frowning down at the round table in the middle of the hallway, where Phaedra had set an overflowing vase of flowers. She glanced at Draco; he teetered on the threshold still. "So that was really an apology, not just because I'm Teddy's sister?" Draco nodded solemnly. He licked his lips embarrassedly and flushed again.

"I thought you were… I thought you and Theo were…_together_," he said, shivering slightly. He folded his arms, hugging his journal to his chest.

"Me and Teddy?" Hermione laughed, resting her head in her hands. A shiver ran up and down her spine at the thought. _Oh holy incestuous-ness… That's disgusting_. She laughed softly and glanced at Draco. He was still blushing embarrassedly. So he had apologised just because…because he knew he was wrong. Somewhere, deep down, his conscience had been woken. He knew that it had upset her when he called her names and made fun of her.

"Thank you, Draco. Thank you for apologising," Hermione smiled softly. Draco moved so quietly she didn't notice had _had_ moved until he sat down beside her on the stairs.

"It doesn't really make it okay, though, does it?" he sighed softly, rubbing his thumbs against the flap closing his journal. Hermione glanced at him and they made eye-contact. "So you're _really_ Theo's sister?" Hermione nodded and grunted softly. She hadn't really _spoken_ about it since her parents had formed an intervention of sorts in her living-room. Everyone knew the details, so to tell Draco about it was…relieving. He sat quietly while she talked.

"I can't even find the words to explain this to my best-friends, and here I am telling you everything," Hermione sniffed, annoyed.

"Well, we're most open with perfect strangers," Draco said sagely. "People we know have built up their expectations of us."

"Like…Draco Malfoy couldn't possibly apologise out of the goodness of his heart," Hermione said, glancing at him. He smiled sadly at the stairs below them. Hermione glanced at the journal and reached for it interestedly. She noticed his knuckles went white as he clutched it.

"What's that for?"

"Mother gave it to me," Draco whispered softly, eyes downcast on the book. "She had me write things down; thoughts, you know. Just so I didn't just keep it all bottled up. She doesn't like that I won't talk to anyone about…about what happened." Hermione moved her hand, unconsciously, towards his where it lay on the step between them. He jumped up abruptly, looking extremely nervous. "I should go."

"O…kay then," Hermione said, watching Draco stride out of the house and duck into a sleek silver car that zipped away noiselessly. "Bye." Utterly baffled by the behaviour of men, Hermione shook her head and walked back to her bedroom. Talking with Draco Malfoy had given her the one thing she needed; the conviction to tell her friends. After all, she couldn't very well have only _Draco Malfoy_ know who she really was and leave it for him to gloat over Harry and Ron that she had confided in _him_… _Hermione, that isn't nice_, she thought, frowning, sitting at her desk. _He probably wouldn't do that…_

Well, she wrote her letters, anyway. One to Harry, another to Ron, though that one was considerably shorter, much more subtle, much less likely to give Ron a reason to spontaneously combust. When Teddy and William had returned, Hermione had already sent the letters off via Nox, Phaedra's owl.

"Hi, Hermione?" Teddy called, and Hermione smiled as her brother bounded into her room. "Do you know what we did this afternoon?"

"I would only be guessing," Hermione chuckled. Teddy produced an envelope from his back-pocket and wafted it under her nose. "_I_ have just bought three tickets to see _A Midsummer Night's Dream _next Thursday. Have you ever seen a wizard production of Shakespeare?" Hermione shook her head, snatching the envelope eagerly and thumbing through the tickets. The production was on the twenty-fourth of June; Midsummer. "You'll love it. It's _amazing_. Dad took me two years ago. We'll take a picnic and everything."

"Why did you get three tickets?" Hermione asked curiously.

"Draco. He's borrowed my copy of _A_ _Midsummer Night's Dream_; he wanted to read the play before we go and see it," Teddy explained excitedly. "If he ever gives it back I'll read it again."

"Oh, he stopped by," Hermione said, jumping up from her bed, where she'd been completing the second draft of her Transfiguration essay, and darting to her dressing-table. She'd started to read the play again—it wasn't her favourite: _Romeo and Juliet_ was—and found Teddy's tiny, indecipherable print along with handwriting she didn't recognise, but assumed to be Draco's, in the margins.

"Draco was here?" Teddy looked extremely surprised. "He knew I was going out today." Hermione frowned bemusedly. Draco hadn't seemed to know what was going on this morning when he'd stopped by. She couldn't imagine why he'd have stopped by with something specifically for Teddy if he knew Hermione's brother wouldn't be at home. Teddy narrowed his eyes scrutinisingly: "Did he talk to you?"

"For a little bit. I told him," Hermione said, and Teddy smiled.

"How did he respond to _that_?" he asked, chuckling, and sat down cross-legged on her bed, hugging the book.

"Well, before I told him, he apologised for everything he's ever done or said to hurt my feelings," Hermione said, sighing, "and I thought he was only apologising because he knew, because someone had told him I'm a pureblood." Teddy smirked and chuckled, and Hermione narrowed her eyes. She didn't like feeling like an idiot; there was no cause for Teddy to rub it in! "So after I'd let that slip, I told him, and he kind of…well, he was acting a little strangely, but I don't know him very well…he seemed really jumpy and he left right away." Teddy smirked, for a reason Hermione didn't know, and she _hated_ when people did that. It was more annoying than having someone smirk because you'd done something silly or they were just gloating. She hated when Draco Malfoy smirked. It always made her feel like she was an idiot.

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**A.N.**: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed/Alerted my story! I love knowing someone actually _reads_ what I write. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside! Next chapter should be up soon!

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	7. The Sirius

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Theo…or Draco…or any of the male cast of HP *wistful sigh*

**Author's Note**: Hiya! After I've spent about an hour reading and replying to my _seventeen_ reviews since I updated I decided I'd better churn this out for you all! *Smiles for all of you who reviewed/Alerted my work!*

I hereby dedicate this chapter to _Rin Cullen_, in celebration of your birthday, and because you asked! So Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you… And merry Christmas in nine days (I'm not counting, honest, my friend Cathy is!)/happy Hanukkah to everyone!

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"Honestly, Phaedra, you don't have to buy me _all_ of these," Hermione protested laughingly. Phaedra laughed softly as she handed the teenaged cashier a wad of £20 notes in exchange for five bags stuffed full of Muggle clothing. On an average day, when necessity called for her to replace a torn blouse or a t-shirt with ripped underarms or jeans with the crotch wearing thin, Hermione would never spend more than £20 on any given item; so far, she had thirteen new dresses, four new tops, a pair of knee-high boots, a pair of ankle boots, T-bar heels, and many little ballet flats and a pair of stringy gold sandals, and in another few shops Phaedra filled two bags full of jewellery that Hermione would probably never end up wearing anyway, and felt very guilty about letting her mother buy. They had traipsed all over London, or so her feet felt like, but luckily Hermione had her handy little beaded purse to carry everything inside. Phaedra was extremely impressed with the magic Hermione had used on it—with Moody's help, of course—and loved the little purse itself. Hermione had only bought it because it went with her dress for Bill and Fleur's wedding—the dress her mother, Jean, had bought for her!

As Teddy had wisely suggested, Hermione let Phaedra do as she wanted with her: her mother was always so happy when she was fawning over Hermione. It didn't matter where they were; she beamed on as Hermione chose seven new books from Flourish and Blotts without complaining once, even though it took Hermione close to an hour, and was richly rewarded (in Hermione's opinion) when Hermione agreed to go to a spa-day with her over the weekend.

"Hermione, this is your father's hard-earned money," Phaedra smiled, sampling a lovely perfume in _Lissuin_, the _only_ cosmetics boutique worth going to in Peony Crescent (so said Phaedra, and Hermione took her word on things like this), the place Hermione learned was the Bond Street, the Fifth Avenue, of the Wizarding couture boutiques. "It is _my_ pleasure to spend it! If you think I am extravagant now, just wait until Christmas comes around!"

Hermione smiled and followed her mother around the boutique, and was coerced—after ten minutes of Phaedra's comparing lipstick tones and shades of eyeshadow on Hermione's hand—to have a 'makeover' by one of the ladies who worked there. Hermione dodged the eyeliner for a few seconds, her eyes watered when she applied the curling mascara, and she had to fight a sneeze as the woman dusted a powder-brush over her face. Phaedra had tamed her hair this morning, setting it into luxuriously thick, glossy waves over her shoulders, and the result of the woman's work in the hand-mirror made Hermione certain she'd used some kind of charms on her. Her average brown eyes looked a lot darker, lined with a thin line of liquid black liner, her lashes curled into fine fans, and her cheeks were gently rouged. Her whole face seemed to glow. The woman hadn't done much, but the person in the mirror just wasn't the Hermione she was used to.

"You look like…" Phaedra cocked her head to one side, eyeing Hermione, "you look like William."

"Does Daddy dress up in drag and wear makeup?" Hermione asked without being able to stop herself. She fought off a smile and bit her cheek, but Phaedra giggled and motioned her to hop off the stool. _Why?_ Hermione moaned; she hadn't sat down all day and it felt so _good_ not to be on her feet.

"I'll tell you an interesting story about that later," Phaedra giggled, and Hermione grinned, silently wishing they could go somewhere and _eat_; she wasn't good on low-sugar levels, as her boys both knew very well. She tended to get snappish, and the last thing she wanted, after spending such a lovely day with her mother, was to make Phaedra feel horrible.

Although the day _had_ been lovely, shopping just wasn't Hermione's _thing_, but it was good that she was trying it out. She never got to do much 'glamorising,' as Ginny called it, with two male best-friends who had seen her covered in everything from Bubotuba puss to blood to the features of a cat and still had trouble distinguishing that she _was_ actually a _girl_. Hermione slumped off the stool and Phaedra listened to the woman's recommendations for Hermione's 'toilette', with a handful of eyeshadows, three shades of lipstick, curling mascara, some glowing powder stuff, blush, some nailpolishes Hermione liked, and they waddled out of the shop with armfuls of heavy bags between them. Her fingers never got this sore when she was carrying bags full of books!

_It makes Mummy happy_, Hermione reminded herself forcefully, smiling as Phaedra practically danced along the street towards Diagon Alley. It wasn't too much to give; a day of shopping, that gave her mother so much happiness. But she wasn't above letting out a groan and melting into the chair outside recently reopened Florean Fortesque's ice-cream parlour and stashing her bags under their little table.

"So, Teddy tells me you're going to see _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ tomorrow," Phaedra beamed. "I always loved that production. Of course, I was in the first ever production-team, so I am biased."

"You were in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_?" Hermione said excitedly.

"I was Titania. I can't tell you how many _lovely_ nicknames your daddy gave me," Phaedra giggled softly, rolling her eyes. "Actually, I met your father when I was an actress," Phaedra smiled wistfully, probably remembering the times years ago when she was a lot younger, but Hermione couldn't imagine it; her mother was still a stunning beauty. "He took up Shakespeare as a hobby, mostly to provoke his parents, who absolutely _hated_ Muggles and were mortified he married me, even though I'm a pureblood! He was Capulet in _Romeo and Juliet_, the play our company rotated with _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. He would wait outside my dressing-room door every night with a bouquet of flowers from the walled-garden." Her eyes glittered and she seemed to go off into her own little fairy-land, highly ironic, Hermione thought, considering she had played the Fairy Queen.

"Do you have photographs—of when you were in the play?"

"Hundreds," Phaedra beamed. "Of when I was pregnant with you, as well. The only time you would ever stop kicking was when we went to plays. It was like you wanted to hear everything that was going on, even if you couldn't see it!" Hermione flushed; she'd never heard stories like this, of when her mother was pregnant with her; she'd never heard of any weird pregnancy cravings or stories like that. Phaedra smiled and reached across the table, gently caressing Hermione's cheekbone with her thumb, her sweet mouth twisting slightly as she undoubtedly was thinking of how Hermione was stolen from her in her most vulnerable state.

While they waited for a waiter to take their order, Hermione glanced up and down Diagon Alley. It wasn't overly busy; there was a comfortable level of busy-noise, punctuated by laughter and giggles and exclamations of delight from _Quality Quidditch Supplies_ where teenaged boys were ogling the newest broom—"It's the _Vesper_; ten-times as fast as the _Firebolt_, with dozens of new charms on it!" one boy exclaimed, with a piteous moan that reminded Hermione so much of Harry when his Nimbus had been smashed by the Whomping Willow that her mind was drawn automatically to _Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes_, where she knew Harry was working part-time during the summer to help the twins and earn a little spending money for himself. Undoubtedly Ron would be there too, as the twins had offered him a job.

"Um…would you mind if I went to _Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes_? There's somebody I'd like to say hello to," Hermione said, and Phaedra nodded, smiling contentedly, watching the world go by. Hermione meandered her way through the buffeting crowd and squished inside the small, packed shop. She rolled her eyes exasperatedly as she squeezed past the cluster of girls cooing over the pygmy-puff cage and sampling the _Wonder Witch _products and had to stand on tiptoe to see over the heads of the crowd. _The twins must be earning a fortune!_ she thought, annoyed at the same time. She couldn't see any telltale red or scruffy black hair, only two girls in the staff uniform of brilliant magenta robes.

"Whoa! _Whoa_!" Hermione staggered to the side and flung her arms up, wand in-hand, as an enormous cardboard box overflowing with merchandise almost upset itself all over her. The box was removed to the floor and Harry laughed breathlessly.

"Hermione! Thanks!" he grinned, kicking the box towards an empty display table. "Didn't think I'd see you here!"

"What, in Diagon Alley?"

"In a joke-shop," Harry laughed good-naturedly. He squatted down to start emptying the box of its contents onto the table and glanced up at her. "I got your letter. Sorry I haven't replied. Fred and George haven't exactly got a whip yet, but I think it's on their To-Buy list."

"Manual-labour's good for you, old chap," Fred said, bouncing over rambunctiously to them, grinning. "Builds character, it does. How are you Hermione? We heard your news."

"Ron didn't speak for half an hour," George said, appearing beside his twin. He rolled his eyes, and Hermione's heart sank. "It was _blissful_."

"So, what can we interest you in? I must say, you're looking lovely today, Hermione," Fred remarked, narrowing his eyes scrutinisingly. "Help yourself to whatever you want; it's on Harry." Harry spluttered indignantly and Fred winked at her.

"I just wanted to talk to Harry," she said, laughing softly.

"Fair enough. Everybody does," George said.

"We think it's good for him, a little bit of hard work," Fred said pompously. "He needs to be knocked a few rungs down the ladder, if you ask me!" Fred laughed and ducked, snatching a bottle of _10 Second Pimple Vanisher_ that Harry had thrown at his head. "Good thing you never tried out for Chaser, Harry! Here, Hermione, have a Sirius."

"A what?"

"A Sirius. Two-way communication device," George grinned, and Hermione almost dropped the little mirror George tossed at her. It was the size of her palm, very prettily etched around the sides. "Speak the name of the person you want to talk to—provided they have a Sirius too—and their face will appear in your mirror. Pain-free communication; no threat of being singed in the Floo network, no worry about lost letters, far more convenient than just popping in unannounced." Hermione laughed softly; Of course, the mirrors Sirius and James had used to communicate in secrecy when they were at school. These were replications of those mirrors, used for mass-communication, sort of like Muggle telephones. "_And_ you can charm the mirrors to respond to your voice and recognise endearments you use for other people. Like your brother, for example."

"How much are they?" Hermione asked. She was sure Phaedra would love to have one, to talk to her dear 'Teddy-bear,' and Hermione too, she supposed.

"For you, free," George smiled. She had always liked George more than his sometimes insincere twin, and smiled bashfully.

"And what if I wanted four?" she asked quietly. Fred narrowed his eyes.

"Two for one," he haggled. Hermione dug into her purse and produced several galleons; George chose another prettily-etched mirror (for girls) and two plain bevelled rectangular mirrors (for boys), her mirror, and wrapped them in protective tissue-paper at the back counter, where she received her change. Harry announced he was having a short break and walked with her out of the shop, breathing a sigh of relief as he undid the top button of his _WWW _robes and welcoming the gentle breeze outside the sweltering, overcrowded shop.

"So…what do you think?" Hermione asked nervously. She had been waiting for the twins to disappear so she could talk to Harry, but they had always had a tendency to dominate any room at any given time. Now she could breathe, but she found it difficult, waiting for Harry's response. He shrugged.

"You're still Hermione. No…no newfound family-heritage is going to change that," Harry said. Hermione was astonished by his level-headedness. She had expected him to at least _glower_ at her for the sheer audacity of her consequence at birth.

"So…so you don't mind that my father was a Death Eater?" Harry sighed heavily.

"You like them. I trust you with my own life, so I doubt you'd be reckless with your own. If you trust them, then I trust _that_," Harry said, smiling subtly. "Anyway, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters." Hermione smiled softly to herself. She had needed this; not his approval, but the confirmation that she still had his friendship.

"Thanks Harry."

"You stuck by me when I was a complete bastard," Harry shrugged. "It wouldn't be right for me to abandon you know that you're a _pureblood_." Hermione giggled.

"It sounds strange, doesn't it? All those years, people calling me 'mudblood,' claiming I was one of the best witches of the year and I was Muggle-born, all the time it was because my parents are powerful wizards," Hermione sighed, shaking her head.

"Does it have to change anything?" Harry asked. "I would've thought you didn't care about that."

"I don't…it's just strange, that's all," Hermione shrugged. "I just want to get to know my family."

"If it happened to me, I'd be doing the same thing," Harry said wistfully. Hermione rumpled his hair and sighed softly, feeling miserable for him.

"I'd love you to meet my mother. She'd love you," Hermione said, thinking quickly. If Phaedra reminded Hermione of one thing, it was Mrs Weasley. Phaedra Nott was the ridiculously wealthy, upper-class version of Mrs Weasley. She'd offered Hermione a home after knowing her maybe five minutes, after all! Harry only had fifteen minutes, so they made their way quickly to Florean Fortesque's and Hermione introduced Harry to her mother, who instantly took a shine to him and accepted many invitations for dinner at their house; it was all for Hermione, she didn't doubt, but she warmed to Phaedra even more when Harry had gone back to work and they sat chatting about him, and her other friends.

* * *

**A.N.**: Okay—Sorry _Rin Cullen_, but I _hate_ this chapter. My brain went bust halfway through and I lost my train of thought, distracted by _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ with Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett on YouTube, so I'll dedicate the next chapter to you as well in penance!

* * *


	8. Peeking! Ooer!

**Disclaimer**: Obviously I don't own anything except that which you don't recognise!

**Author's Note**: Um…Thank you _everyone_ for all your great reviews (you made me rethink my opinion on Chapter 7) and for Alerting me! This fic as the most hits of all my stories! Yay! So anyway, I think I'll dedicate this chapter to _Rin Cullen _for your birthday, _fallingstar93_, because you asked for it, _TriGemini_, and the ever-faithful _margaritama_.

* * *

"_TEDDY_!" Hermione bellowed, fogging up the little mirror she held in her hand. She growled, chuntered, and rolled off her bed, stomping to the bathroom and flinging open her brother's bedroom door. Of course, he wasn't at home: He'd gone to see Draco earlier this afternoon. With books, which was never a good sign. They were probably still talking. "And of _course_," Hermione sighed exasperatedly, snatching up the little bevelled mirror on his bedside cabinet, "he didn't take his Sirius with him!!" _No bloody use giving it to him if he won't carry it around with him! _She stuffed the mirror into her little purse, snatched up her jacket in her room and went to the kitchen, where the fireplace in the ante-chamber outside was used only for Floo: she cast some dust into the grate, emerald-green flames reared up and she sighed heavily; "Malfoy Manor."

_I know I haven't been invited over but otherwise we're going to miss the start of the play_, Hermione thought, glowering as she clamped her eyes shut—and mouth and covered her nose—hearing the roar of the fire all around her as she kept her limbs tucked in. _I hate Floo. I hate Floo. I hate Floo. I hate Floo. _And just as she thought she was going to throw-up the nauseating spinning slowed and she came to a stop inside the great fireplace of Malfoy Manor's drawing-room. Drawing her wand, she quickly dusted herself off of soot and glanced around: Mrs Malfoy hadn't stirred from her needlework except to raise her eyebrows.

"I'm sorry to just drop in, but is Teddy here?" she panted. She didn't like this room. "He and Draco were supposed to meet me at home an hour ago."

"Draco's bedroom is upstairs and down at the end of the gallery," Mrs Malfoy smiled graciously. Hermione nodded her thanks and practically ran across the room, trying not to visualise where she had been tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange. _Wow. Nice house_, Hermione thought, amazed at the beauty of the decorations and everything as she walked along the gallery; all the subjects of the portraits were relatively pale after about the mid-nineteenth century. Before them, the Malfoys were as black as Bellatrix had been. They all had that same look about them, though; money. Hermione had come to realise that was the one thing that separated the whole of society; money corrupted, in some cases, and the power gained through excessive wealth.

She slowed down when she came to the last portrait; Draco, painted for his sixteenth birthday, or so the little silver plaque at the bottom of the intricate frame read. He'd been letting his hair grow out since Easter; in the portrait it fell gracefully to his neck and he wore deep emerald-green robes, and when he saw her he grinned rakishly, completely out of character, but Hermione's breath was all but taken away by how handsome—and different—he looked when he was…when he was happy. It was then that she heard the low laughter of her brother and the excited chatter of someone else. She narrowed her eyes and squared her shoulders and flung Draco's bedroom door open, startling the two boys who were sprawled in comfy armchairs by Draco's little fire, the occasional-table between them stacked with Butterbeer bottles and sweets from Honeyduke's and books.

"Hermione! You're—at my house?" Draco stammered. Hermione glanced around his room, taking everything in; emerald-green walls, and the Slytherin house logo emblazoned on the wall above his bed in glittering silver paint, _Just like Regulus' room_, she thought. The bedroom was very _lived_-_in_; she could tell he spent a lot of time in here, and just because he didn't have friends—like Teddy, really—didn't mean he didn't have a life. The walls were plastered with posters of Muggle films and bands—_Kings of Leon, cool!_—obviously there to spite his parents, well, his father, pictures of broomsticks and a large map of the world on one wall, stuck with little glowing pins and a piece of green yarn connecting them together. _Wonder what that is_, she thought interestedly, glancing at the map more closely.

"Who's this?" Hermione gasped, stalking to one of Draco's bedside cabinets and snatching a toy horse with a saddle from the table, whipping around the grin gleefully at Draco.

"No one," Draco answered too quickly, and Teddy scoffed quietly.

"_I'm not no-one_," Hermione said in a low voice, speaking for the horse.

"Captain Shakespeare, what are you _doing_ here?" Draco snapped, taking the horse and holding him to his chest covetously.

"We were supposed to leave _an hour_ ago," Hermione frowned, dropping her bag and jacket at the foot of the little table and taking up a book, smacking it over Teddy's head. He fought her away playfully and Draco glanced at the carriage-clock on his mantelpiece.

"Oh! Buggar it, I forgot to wind the clock!" Draco moaned, jumping across the room to examine the clock. Hermione glared at the two of them, hands on hips. _They're both as bad as each other_, she thought angrily.

"Do you even have the picnic ready?" Hermione asked indignantly.

"It's downstairs in the kitchen," Draco said, his tongue sticking between his teeth as he wound the clock with his wand.

"Sorry Hermes, we were having a really good debate," Teddy apologised: Hermione narrowed her eyes. She didn't like turning up late, not even fashionably-late, to anything and this was _Shakespeare_. She loved Shakespeare.

"Don't call me Hermes. Only Daddy gets to call me Hermes, and only because he won't _not_," Hermione snapped. The boys exchanged a smirk, and she could have sworn they were moving in slow-motion just to piss her off as they collected their things. "Come _on_, come _on_! Hurry up!"

"Calm and collected, Granger. We said we'd be there on time, we'll _be there on time_," Draco said softly.

"And so will a thousand _other_ people," Hermione protested, grabbing her jacket and stalking out of the room. They were halfway down the staircase into the great foyer when she realised there was no weight in either of her hands. She checked her pockets and swore.

"Shit! I forgot my bag; I'll be back," she said, turning on her heel back up the stairs.

"We're going to miss the first scene," Teddy complained.

"Well whose fault is _that_?" Hermione snapped over her shoulder. She strode up the stairs, wishing she hadn't worn heels. _Yeah, but I wanted to impress_… Well, either way, her feet would end up killing her and she didn't even know if Draco had taken in her outfit; she had picked out the wine-red dress that was kind of clingy to the torso and sleeveless; it was low-necked with a decorative knot and it looked really good when she wasn't wearing a bra underneath, and it swung about her knees as she walked. She'd actually managed to do something pretty with her hair today, even though Phaedra offered to do it: she'd smoothed it and pulled it back into a casual bun at the base of her neck and stuck an artificial rose hairclip into it, and she'd put a bit of 'smack' on, as William called it; her lips were deep red and she'd only used a little bit of mascara to balance that out, and the necklace she wore was one of her favourites from the hoard Phaedra had bought her; it was gold, with twenty-four different heart charms dangling from it.

She sighed as she reached Draco's bedroom and went straight to the little table where the boys had kept their hoards of food, kneeling down. She folded her jacket over her arm and clutched her purse, and somehow the handwriting on a piece of parchment sticking out under the chair Draco had occupied caught her eye; it was her name.

'_Hermione; she's actually a—_'

_Actually a what?_ Hermione thought, lowering her head to see what Draco had written next. She glanced over her shoulder, worried one of the boys had come to see what she was doing, and in a split-second of indecision she had stuffed Draco's fat journal into her little bag.

"Ready?" she asked breathlessly, glancing at Draco warily. _He knows, he knows; you should put it back, Hermione_, she scolded herself mentally, but she was curious. And curiosity was one of the strongest emotions. _Look how much trouble Harry's gotten into in the past because of it_, she thought. Harry _always_ got into trouble because he was so curious. Draco stopped by the drawing-room to say goodbye to his mother; she smiled and waved at them all and Hermione's eyebrows rose as she saw the sleek silver car outside in the courtyard. A house-elf wore a chauffeur's cap in the front-seat and waited patiently for them to file into the back of the car.

* * *

Ten minutes later, they filed out of the car onto the luxuriously springy lawn of one of wizard London's largest parks. Of course it was beautiful; the trees were all decked out with new leaves and the cherry-blossoms bloomed year-round, the grass was springy and lush and smelled wonderful but it wasn't damp, and it was easy to see where the congregation for _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ was being held; everyone, most of them carrying blankets and picnic-baskets, was being drawn to the outdoor stage, around which people were just beginning—Hermione was very thankful and kept walking faster and faster until the boys had to jog to keep up with her, so they could get a good position from which to see everything—to set up their blankets and folding chairs and late-afternoon picnics. It was interesting to see who had come to the play; she smirked and was reminded forcefully of Luna Lovegood and her father at Bill and Fleur's wedding, as many of the people who surrounded their blanket wore the same distracting robes and eccentric accessories.

She laughed out-loud when Luna Lovegood appeared out of nowhere and danced over, wearing probably what she viewed an accurate costume-piece for the production they were about to watch, in a gossamer-fine dress that floated around her, covered in glitter and sequins.

"Hermione," she said dreamily, offering her arms to hug Hermione. Hermione stood up from her little folding chair and hugged Luna fiercely. She had never been on particularly the same level as Luna, what with her belief in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, or whatever they were, but Luna had always been one of the most loyal DA members. Neville, of course, held that supreme title. ((A.N.: In my imagination, Luna Lovegood is something like the character of Cassie from _Skins_: It's an English TV-show and it is _legend_! And Cassie's this anorexic pill-popper so she's always out of it! Kind of like Luna!)) And here he came, strolling over leisurely between the picnickers, flashing grins here and there whenever a pretty girl caught his eye: he had changed so much over the past year Hermione barely recognised him, in character. In looks he was the same old Neville, just with a few faint scars that would probably make the girls swoon.

"I didn't know you liked Shakespeare, Luna," Hermione smiled.

"Oh. Wow, no I _love_ it," Luna sighed wistfully. "Look at all these people! Are _these_ nice people?" Her bulbous eyes swivelled onto Teddy and Draco, who were both sprawled over the blanket and digging into the picnic-basket.

"We're getting along," Hermione said, glancing at Draco, who had curled up and faced away from the group: she detected a faint tinge to the part of his cheek she could see and glanced at Luna. _Oh yeah_, she thought heavily, remembering how she wasn't the only girl who had been held captive (however briefly in her case) in Malfoy Manor. Neville grinned at her as he neared their group and grabbed her in a bone-crunching hug.

"Hi Hermione," he beamed. "I heard about your news from Harry when I went to the shop last week. A pureblood-traitor! It's nice to have you in the fold!" Hermione laughed and glanced at Teddy.

"Um, Neville, this is my brother, Theodore Nott," Hermione smiled, and Neville grinned at Teddy as the latter offered his hand to shake, which Neville did. "And you know Draco, of course." Draco flicked his eyes over her as he turned and then glanced at Neville: he stood up and dusted his hands off on his jeans, offering his hand to Neville, his face completely solemn. Hermione glanced between them; they were exactly the same height, and completely opposite in colouring. Neville's scars were visible; Draco's were buried beneath. _And in his journal_, Hermione thought, with a guilty internal cringe.

"Keeping alive, Longbottom?" Draco asked. No doubt Draco was familiar with Neville's treatment last year and his subsequent hide-out with fellow students in mortal-peril from the Carrows.

"I like it," Neville shrugged, clasping Draco's hand firmly and shaking it. Hermione smiled; Neville was always the bigger-man, even when they were younger and getting involved in stupid little squabbles, but he had never been one to bear a grudge. _If only Ron was the same_, she thought, with a heavy sigh. She _still_ hadn't heard back from him despite having seen Harry, Fred _and_ George yesterday. "Gran would kill me if I died." Hermione laughed softly; Neville's face was completely serious, and Hermione knew from secondary experience, through Neville, that Mrs Longbottom was _not_ a lady to be trifled with.

"Well, it looks like they're asking for our tickets," Neville said, glancing over Hermione's shoulder at a lithe woman in flowing periwinkle-blue robes taking tickets from people. "We'd better get back to Dean and Susan." Hermione smirked at Neville; _Susan_. He caught her eye and flushed and hurried back to his blanket with Luna, who pranced along.

"Susan _Bones_?" Teddy said quietly, glancing after Neville and grinning at Hermione.

"Why is it you Gryffindors always have a thing for red-heads?" Draco asked. He was lying on the blanket, his forearm draped over his eyes to shield them from the blistering late-afternoon sun, chewing on a juicy plum. "First it was Potter and that Weasley-girl, now Longbottom and Susan Bones; even _you're_ friends with Weasley."

"I don't think it was the hair-colour that attracted Potter," Teddy smirked, and Hermione wrinkled her nose and smacked him on the arm playfully.

"Those are my friends you're talking about!" she cringed. "Don't make me think things no one should _ever_ think about their friends! I might have to hex you."

"Go ahead!" Draco laughed. "Longbottom Bones. What do you think about _that_?" Teddy and Draco both giggled, and Hermione shivered at the sexual connotations. _Disgusting. Disgusting_, she giggled, shaking her head.

"Who d'you think taught Ginny Weasley the Bat-Bogey Hex?" Hermione challenged, drawing her wand out and looming threateningly over Draco. She shouted in surprise and laughed loudly as Draco grabbed her around the waist and tugged her onto the floor. They were all limbs and hair and Hermione was self-conscious of her stomach as she laughed and wished she'd put a bra on, even though she didn't exactly _dislike_ being manhandled, even playfully, by Draco. Draco lay back, completely relaxed, smirking deliciously as he wound her wand between his slender, intelligent fingers.

"Give me back my wand, Draco," Hermione said, but she couldn't bring off a threatening growl when she was having fun, and couldn't help smiling down at Draco as he taunted her with her wand.

"Um…_nope_," Draco smirked, twisting and turning on the floor as she lunged for her wand. She grinned mischievously as she started tickling his sides where his plain heather-grey t-shirt rode up; he giggled, tried not to, and his cheeks flushed red with the effort of trying not to appear like he actually had human emotions.

"Wow! Look at this Teddy! I got Draco Malfoy to _smile_!" Hermione gasped in mock delight.

"I didn't even know he had teeth!" Teddy mused.

"Well, you'd better enjoy it," Draco groaned as he sat up, pulling his t-shirt down. Hermione pouted; _I was enjoying the view_, she complained mentally. "This is the only smile you'll see all year."

"Oh dear. We've used up his quota already," Hermione sighed heavily, falling back onto the blanket to rest her head on Teddy's stomach. He offered her a peach and Hermione bit into it, the sweet juice spurting over her chin. A napkin appeared out of nowhere and she smiled down at Draco as she took it from his outstretched hand.

"Tickets please… Thank you. The play should begin in five minutes," the witch said, taking their tickets, ripping them carelessly in half and handing back their stubs. Hermione kept hers in her purse, her hand brushing against the cool leather of Draco's journal as she deposited the half-ticket, and quickly closed her purse before either of the boys could see inside it.

"Would you like a programme?" someone asked, and another witch in the company's periwinkle-blue robes smiled down at them, flashing glossy programmes from a tray. "Two sickles apiece." Hermione reached into her purse but Teddy had already bought three, and Draco frowned thoughtfully as he flicked through his. Hermione wondered if she knew anyone in the production; she could honestly say she did not, and just as the sun was beginning to set, giving the few cotton-ball clouds a gilded tinge, Theseus strolled onstage, resplendent in velvet robes, with a lovely woman on his arm dressed in an exquisite Renaissance replica gown with pearls worked through her crown.

"Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace…" Hermione settled into her little folding chair, and she didn't take her eyes off the stage until the intermission. She was, pardon the pun, spellbound, enchanted by the gorgeous costumes of the fairies, the exquisitely painted backdrops, and Puck had the whole audience giggling with Oberon. Despite their picnic basket, Draco dashed off as soon as the curtain fell across the stage and returned with three iced bottles of Butterbeer and three enormous gooey double-fudge cookies drizzled with melted white chocolate on top that made Hermione physically sick after she'd eaten half of it because it was so bitter-sweet.

* * *

"I can't believe how late it is," Teddy yawned, as they all crashed—literally and sugar-levelly—into the back of the Malfoys' sleek silver car. Hermione hummed contentedly, curled up into Teddy's side, and smiled softly at Draco. She was sleepy, and on a sugar-crash, but still energised from watching the _amazing_ performance.

"See you soon, Draco," she smiled tiredly, Teddy helping her clamber out of the car. She was desperate to get into the house and into her own room. In her own bedroom, she closed the curtains, closed her bedroom doors, wriggled into her comfiest pyjamas and rifled through her purse.

"Crookshanks, you are _never_ going to believe this," Hermione sighed, opening Draco's journal to the page he had marked with a sliver of ribbon as her familiar curled into a ball in her lap. Stroking Crookshanks' fur absent-mindedly, Hermione let her eyes flit over the page, absorbing Draco's handwriting;

'_June 22, 2008: You'll never believe what I just found out. You know Hermione? She's a pureblood. She just told me when I went over to the Notts' house. I only thought she was staying there because she and Theo were going out or something. Thank god _that_'s not the case! All they'd ever do together would be debating over Arithmancy or Ancient Runes or whatever._

_She still doesn't get it. We've been to school together for five years, for fuck's sake, and she still has no idea how much I like her. For a smart girl, she definitely can be stupid sometimes! I like that she's smart, and is so committed to her schoolwork. She knows what she wants and is going for it. I don't have that kind of motivation._

_Nobody at school used to like her because she was always so uppity. Hermione can't help being so smart; all of the girls at school are complete twits. All Pansy and Daphne care about is marrying some rich older snob who'll leave them lots of money. Thank god they think I'm too young and Father won't die quickly enough—they're so heartless—to leave me everything before I'd have to work for a living! Blaise says he thinks they've been spending too much time with his 'shameless gold-digging whore of a mother'—his words, not mine! Hermione's different, though; she doesn't care what people think of her._

_I wish I was like that. Father said we shouldn't pay attention to what other people believe about us, because he says we're superior to others because of our blood-heritage. I think it's a pile of Hippogriff shit! So what if I'm a pureblood. I'm a scion of the Houses of Malfoy and Black and I can barely scrape an E in Potions! Hermione Granger—or Nott? She doesn't know whether she'd like to change her name or not—thought she was a Muggleborn her entire life until last week, and she's the best witch in our entire school._

_Hermione looked really good today. She had that…'just got back from the beach' look about her, all glowey. And she was wearing those tiny little shorts all the Muggle girls wear around London. I shouldn't have gone over there today, I know. But Theo said he was going to London and Mummy had Phaedra over for tea. I just wanted to see her. Last night didn't count. Father was there, and he _hates_ Hermione because he thinks she's a blood-traitor now, not a Muggleborn, which I think in his opinion is probably worse! Hang on a second—I've stopped calling people Mudblood! Yeah!_

_Mummy doesn't__ care whether Hermione's a pureblood _or_ a Muggleborn. She agrees with me that Hermione's very pretty—but she says Hermione could dress up a little more, as she is 'getting to that age where the boys start noticing!' It's very weird to think Mummy was Hermione's age when Father started courting her. I can't imagine Father being all lovey-dovey like they are in that café in Hogsmeade. It makes me cringe. Father=Love? I don't think so!_

_Otherwise why would he have let everything happen to our family? If he truly loved us, he'd never have taken the Mark in the first place. Mummy said he took it when they left Hogwarts and were already engaged. How could he have done that to Mummy? He should have known there'd be repercussions. Like your only child being branded because _he_ was a twat and got his arse kicked by a group of teenagers in my class at school! ;D That's hilarious. They've beaten me in duels before, but at least I'm not more than twice their age! Remember when one of the Weasley twins and Harry Potter beat me up after the quidditch game—which I deserved :( 'cause I badgered them into it—Blaise suggested I should take Muggle boxing-classes for Muggle self-defence if I got into another fistfight. I'd forgotten about that. He said you'd get to beat the shit out of a big bag and it'd work for me channelling my 'unexpressed anger'. Blaise only knows about that sort of stuff because his mother makes him go to psychotherapy sessions, because he's a nymphomaniac._

_Hey, look, there's a splash of Butterbeer for you. It's three a.m. and I can't sleep. You'd think I'd just plonk right off, seeing as how I just had a great wank over—'_

Hermione slammed the book shut, feeling extremely hot under the collar, and jumped off her bed, going to her dressing table. She fiddled with her makeup and the silver toilette set, trying to think about anything but that last lingering sentence. Her entire body was trembling with adrenaline; she felt that way she only ever felt when she was reading a novel and something embarrassing and cringe-worthy was going to happen to one of the characters and she just couldn't read on to witness it. But as with those novels, she always had to finish them, just for the sake of knowing what embarrassing thing had befallen them:

'…_seeing as how I just had a great wank over Hermione. Wish I could've taken a picture of her in the dress she was wearing tonight. It was kind of a nude colour underneath the black lace and quite short, and it showed off her legs and her boobs. Man, her boobs are gorgeous. Blaise once said she was a 'waste of boobs,' because every Potions lesson she'd—well, we'd all—get kind of sweaty and hot and she'd take her cardigan off, and I know she really likes one bra she has that's black with gold floral lace and little gold bows between her boobs and on the straps. I reckon if she knew we could see through her blouse then she wouldn't wear that bra, which is a shame, because Potions is the only time I really get to see her. Of course, Weasley and Potter don't notice._

_Blaise says they've probably known each other too long to notice stuff like that.__ Pansy's horrible and says really snide things about them, like they have threesomes in the Gryffindor dorms. (Cringe: I doubt Weasley has ever even managed to kiss a girl; he's such a Muppet!)_

_Blaise and I were talking about threesomes the other day, and if we each could choose one girl and pick the third together and have them on a rotation, we'd have Hermione, Padma Patil from Ravenclaw—she's definitely the prettier twin, we both agree—and that pretty blonde from Ravenclaw—the one they call Loony. Blaise likes her, even if she and her father are a bit eccentric. She was the one the others took hostage here at home to make her father behave—he owns the Quibbler. He was the only one actively opposing the Death Eaters. Us. Them, I don't know!_

_I don't want to think about that now. I'm supposed to be getting past that. That's why I have to write in you. Well, I like writing. Mummy bought me replacements for my watercolour paint-set. I think I'll try and paint the dress Hermione was wearing the other night. Then maybe my eyes will be so tired I'll fall asleep. Adieu, Draco._'

And he had; he'd painted a lovely replication of her little lacy taupe dress, and flicking through the previous pages, she saw many more different paintings, all exquisitely detailed and tenderly painted.

_Wow_, she thought, breathing out a sigh and resting against the pillows she'd punched into the corner of her bed and the headboard. As much as his thoughts confirmed he was just another pervy, horny little teenaged boy, at least he was honest. She'd never had a conversation as frank and open with either Harry _or_ Ron in the entire time she'd known them. Well, Harry, but most of the time before Dumbledore had been killed Harry kept everything under his hat. Then she reminded herself that she had _stolen_ Draco's journal and had invaded his privacy by reading these very personal—and blush-worthy—thoughts. _But I can't help it_, Hermione moaned, shaking her head at herself. She frowned and turned to the very first page, settling back, fighting her conscience, which sounded suspiciously like _Harry_! _Why the hell is _Harry_ my conscience? Can't I have Jiminy Cricket?_

_**The Diary of Draco Abraxas Malfoy**_

_^Fuck that, there's no way I'm writing a _diary.

_Diaries are for pussies. _PansyParkinson_ writes a diary._

Name_: Mummy, you wrote it ^right there^!_

Birthday_: 5 May, 1992_

Age_: Work it out. Then again, you _are _a _book_; I'm fourteen. And my _mother_ got me this book and is making me write in it every day. I don't even know why I'm writing at all; it isn't as if she's going to check. Fucking waste of time, if you ask me: Mum just thinks I should have a way to express myself that isn't making Dr Psyche cry like last session. Serves her right; she charges too much, and all she got out of me the session before last was I'm angry with father (and 1700 galleons from Mummy, too! Let's not forget dear Doc's hourly rate of 140 galleons. That's extortionate, but Mummy says she doesn't care how much she has to pay if only I'll talk to someone about this)._

_I'M VERY ANGRY WITH MY FATHER._

_I'M VERY ANGRY WITH MY FATHER._

_I'M VERY ANGRY WITH MY FATHER._

_I'M VERY ANGRY WITH MY FATHER._

_Also I have a problem with unexpressed emotions. Alert the media, why don't you? I bet even thick-head Ron Weasley could tell you that! Then again, maybe not, as he's always pissing me off and making me curse him. The doc and I really went deep!_

_I'm getting good at saying it, though, aren't I, for someone who was incapable of human speech until my thirteenth session with Dr Psyche? That woman is so up herself, I wouldn't be surprised if she was related to Gilderoy Lockhart. I'm going to say it again for you;_

_I'M VERY ANGRY WITH MY FATHER. Do you want to know why? Here, I'll draw a picture—_(Draco had painted a sickening image of the Dark Mark freshly branded on bloodied, scorched skin) _Nice, isn't it? All the Big Kids have one. Daddy always said if I was a very good boy I could have one too!_

_Twat._

_I hate him—I am _VERY ANGRY _with my father._

_Now he's gone and gotten himself chucked into Azkaban and Mummy's having a nervous-breakdown because she misses him so much and is so worried about me being initiated into the Death Eaters. Last week she went to see Professor Snape, which she rarely does, even though he's my godfather. I'd much rather have Sirius Black as my godfather, like Harry Potter does. At least Black has a bit of colour to his background. He ran away from home—he's my mother's cousin—and Mummy said he had these best-friends who he always got into trouble with and they had really cool nicknames. She can remember him from when she was at school with Father, but he ran away when he was sixteen and Great-Aunt Walburga curse him off some family-tree, like they burned off Mummy's older sister, Andromeda, I think her name is._

_Wish I was a Marauder—that's what they used to call themselves, Mummy says, and Black's nickname was 'Padfoot'. Father says it probably has something to do with Black's Animagi-form. He can turn into an enormous dog. That's what Pettigrew says anyway. I hate Pettigrew. He really is a rat. Mummy won't let him into the house: as if he'd ever have the nerve to come here by himself anyway!_

_Wish I had friends like Sirius did. He'd have died for them. All I've got are Crabbe and Goyle. And you can't really call _them_ friends. There's always Blaise, I suppose, and Theo. Theo's nicer; he's really smart and lets me borrow his Muggle books; I'm very into the poet Blake and Shakespeare plays at the moment. _Hamlet. _Sounds a bit like my life._

'_To be or not to be'. He should have just decided, though__, and stopped whining. I suppose I understand the dilemma, after Theo explained about the context, you know; Christianity viewed suicide as a mortal sin or something and you couldn't go to heaven or even have a Christian ceremony. I don't know. But if Hamlet wanted to die, he should have just killed himself._

_There has to be something better on the other side. I don't know if I could stand it if this was the best my life was ever going to be. Then it wouldn't be death, I suppose, but there has to be _something_ to make all this suffering worthwhile. Anything's better than this…_

Hermione was absolutely enthralled by Draco Malfoy's train of thought. It forced her to look at him with an entirely new perspective and she found herself…_liking_ Draco Malfoy, even the one she hadn't known until last week, the one who had still called her a Mudblood at every opportunity and cursed Harry and badgered Ron and his brothers into fistfights. She read on continuously throughout the entire book, and considering Draco had written an entry (usually four or five pages long plus beautiful illustrations) for every day over the last two years, it was daybreak by the time she finally closed the book, having already read the last entry, and, completely emotionally wrecked after crying her eyes out for two hours over his journal-entries from his struggles with the Vanishing Cabinet and fears his mother would be killed, and the worst--Dumbledore's death--she fell straight to sleep, mind buzzing with thoughts of Draco Malfoy.

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**A.N.**: WOW! Did _I _have fun writing that! *Does a little dance in her chair* It's amazing how into a character you get when you're writing, and I apologise if he's a bit too AU-ish and not strict Draco Malfoy I HATE MUDBLOODS-canon. I wanted him angry in the first journal entry. Oh, and I should probably credit Richard Gere or the writers of _Pretty Woman_ for the 'I am very angry with my father' line. I _love_ Pretty Woman!

_Fallingstar93_ I hope you enjoyed the peek inside Draco's journal :D

By the time I upload this it'll be 00:04 in England. And I'd promised you an update by..technically yesterday. *Hangs head in shame*

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	9. SMOOCH!

**Disclaimer**: You've found this website, obviously you know it's not the real thing!

**Author's Note**: Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, reviews! Yay! I absolutely loved writing that last chapter! _OMFG UPDATE I LOVE THIS!!! _and _Lita_—thanks for the reviews; I couldn't send you a message back :{

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Hermione couldn't wait to leave the house when she finally woke up, which was appallingly quickly after she'd fallen asleep: she'd had about three hours' sleep by the time Crookshanks started licking her face, and when she heard Teddy churning out concertos on the upright piano in his bedroom there was no way she could get back to sleep. So she showered and spent half an hour deciding on an outfit, finally settling on a sweet multi-patterned short silk dress, her favourite dark blue jeans, her brown cowboy boots, and flicked her wand so that her hair plaited itself into two lovely intricate braids, which she tied with two pieces of midnight-blue velvet ribbon. She sat in front of her mirror doing her makeup and dabbed the excess wine-red lipstick from her lips so only the pigment stain remained and did her eyes like the woman had done them at _Lissuin_; luxurious curling lashes. She smiled at her reflection; she looked a bit like an Old Hollywood glamour-girl, like Ava Gardner or Gene Tierney or someone, from those films her adoptive-mother used to watch when she was younger. Checking herself over in the mirror again, she went downstairs with her purse (in which she'd stashed Draco's journal) and tossed some powder into the grate: "Malfoy Manor."

Mrs Malfoy wasn't sitting in the drawing-room when Hermione stepped out of the grate. She dusted herself off with her wand and glanced around the room. The entire house was silent, but the marble of the floor in the drawing-room made everything echo eerily as she pigeon-stepped across the room. Knowing it was wrong to sneak around, but glad she didn't meet Mr Malfoy, she hoped silently that Draco wasn't home and that she could slip his journal back in its place without him noticing.

_Of course_ he was at home; it would have been much too convenient for her not to have to see him. She could hear his music—_Use Somebody_ by Kings of Leon—through his closed door as she reached the end of the gallery, and portrait-Draco smirked knowingly down at her. She knocked on the bedroom door and waited.

"Not now, Mummy, I'm studying naked," Draco sighed, cutting his music for a few seconds.

"_What_!" _Oooh!!_ Hermione smirked, wondering if he was just joking, hand on the door-knob, or whether she would catch him butt-naked!

"Hermione?" his voice said through the door. She grabbed hold of the door-knob as the door opened a fraction of an inch.

"No, no, no!" Hermione laughed nervously. The door jerked open despite her efforts and Draco smirked deliciously as he rested against the doorframe, wearing one of his yummy plain heathered-grey t-shirts and his dark jeans, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You're dressed!"

"And you're at my house. I wonder who's more disappointed," Draco smirked, eyeing her up and down. _This boy jacks-off over you_, Hermione thought, frowning at Draco as he smiled and a shiver went up and down her spine. "What're you doing here?"

"Um…I came back to return something that I..._stole_," Hermione said quietly, feeling the heat creep up her neck and cheeks. _You should have just left it in the drawing-room. He'd never have known! You IDIOT!_ Draco frowned bemusedly at her for a few seconds, then something sparked in his eyes and his mouth opened a little bit, eyes widening, and he turned back to his bedroom, going straight for his armchair by the fire. _Oooh! Nice butt_, Hermione thought, distracted momentarily as Draco squatted down by the table, his jeans pulled taut, but as soon as he had flipped up the valance of the upholstery she cringed guiltily.

_What's he going to do?_ she thought worriedly. Had it been Ron, no, Harry, he would have most likely bellowed to high-hell and gotten over it by dinnertime after brooding for a few hours. But she didn't know how to gauge Draco's reactions like she could Harry's, although she felt she knew _him_ better than she knew Harry, which was a strange thought. She'd only read his journal; _Yes, that's the problem!_

"_You_ took it!" he said accusatorily, standing up straight and staring at her with wide, reproachful eyes. Hermione stepped tentatively over the threshold of his room, wondering if there were any special features of the room that would keep her still while he cursed her to oblivion.

"I…I saw my name written when I came back to get my purse last night and I was curious and then I couldn't stop reading it," Hermione said in one breath, dropping her head shamefully, wishing she hadn't worn her hair up so it could have formed a curtain across her face. She brought Draco's journal out from her purse and offered it to him, not looking at him. Of course, the guilt of '_thieving_,' as her Harry-Conscience called it, and of reading the journal had been pushed virtually out of the window, so to speak, when she'd actually _read_ what Draco had written. Draco took the journal gently and opened it to the last page he had updated, scanned what he'd written to refresh his memory and flushed bright red. _Wow._ She'd never seen him blush before.

"You…you read this last page?"

"Er…" Hermione bounced on the balls of her feet nervously, avoiding eye-contact. _Do I tell him I've read everything? Lull him into a false sense of security. The boys love it. _But Draco's eyes had darkened to that soft heathered-grey; she'd come to realise last night that the only way he expressed his emotions was through his eyes, and when they softened like that he was speculative or mellow. That was good, for her.

"You…you read _all_ of it." Hermione cringed at his tone; betrayed. Harry got like that a lot, when he thought he was completely alone and everything was working against him, and _she_ was the only one on whom he could take out his frustrations. _Maybe you should get Harry a journal… He doesn't even use that homework-diary you got him!_

"It was just so…_good_," Hermione said lamely, wincing guiltily. She couldn't think of any other way to describe it; he'd made her laugh sometimes; other times she felt like she wanted to slit her wrists or drink a bottle of Ouzo—and _sometimes_ he'd made her so hot and horny she'd started wishing he was... Well, she vividly recalled a quote of his incorporating 'Hermione' and 'Honeyduke's hot-fudge sauce' in one sentence. "I know I had absolutely _no right_ to steal your journal, much less read it, and I'll understand if you want to curse me into oblivion; it'd be less than I deserve, so if you want to curse me, I'll understand, and I won't hex you back." She straightened up, arms spread and welcoming any curse he might throw her way. He stared.

"You _want _me to curse you?" he laughed incredulously, taken-aback. Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"You're not _going to_?" she stared.

"I know you'd probably expect me to," Draco said solicitously. "But I don't think I'll give you that satisfaction."

"You're not going to curse me!" Hermione gaped incredulously. _Why the hell not?_ "I stole your journal and _read it_! Aren't you at least a little bit pissed off?"

"Not really."

"Are you high?" Hermione asked, frowning. She surprised a laugh out of Draco; he smiled softly and flicked his eyes over her face.

"No, I'm not," he said softly.

"So why aren't you cursing me?" He laughed again at her insistent tone, and the hands on her hips. This was really annoying her. She wasn't used to Draco Malfoy being so blasé. She wanted _her_ Draco Malfoy back: the one who would call her 'Mudblood', curse her, and insult her friends! _Do _something_ for god's sake!_

"Well…" Hermione dropped into a chair in front of the fire, utterly defeated. "I don't know what to say!"

"A first, I think," Draco said tartly, smirking deliciously at her as he leaned on the back of his armchair. Hermione glared at him, but could find no appropriate response. _Why isn't my brain working properly?_ she thought desperately.

"So, what did you think of it?" Draco asked softly, and Hermione glanced up. _Huh_? "What I've written. You're a literary critique. What did you think?" Hermione flushed. Did he really want to know what she thought to his ideas on fluffy red handcuffs and fudge sauce? No. She'd pretend she hadn't read that.

"I thought… I _think_ that if…" Hermione stood up and took the journal from him, kneeling on his chair facing him. She opened the journal to one of her favourite pages; the entry just after Katie Bell had been cursed by the opal necklace. The beginning of his breakdown. "I think that if you let people see the person in _here_…" He took the journal and read, and as he did so he tautened his jaw and blinked furiously as his eyes glistened, following the writing that was just barely decipherable through the tearstains that had bleached parts of his writing.

"And…" Once he had finished reading that part, she flicked ahead to the painting of the shattered chandelier on the marble floor in the drawing-room. Where he'd talked all about her and having to watch her be tortured and being unable to do anything to prevent it; the tears had fallen freely here, too, the handwriting rough and scratchy; he might have been writing in the dark, his hand shaking, unable to talk to anyone else, probably afraid for his life when Voldemort arrived after Bellatrix's summons.

"If you were so open with other people, like you are with this journal, if you let people see who_ you _are instead of who people expect you to be, I think we could have been friends a long time ago," Hermione said softly, smiling sadly. _Friends_, she thought with a heavy sigh, sliding her eyes wistfully over Draco's handsome features as he looked down determinedly at his journal, his eyes hard and glassy. His mouth gave him away; his lower lip trembled ever so slightly.

"Friends," he whispered hoarsely, as if unable to hold it in. He blinked and wiped his cheek. Hermione gazed up at him: she had never been this close to him before, in private, with absolutely no-one to interrupt them. He sniffed subtly and came to sit on the arm of the chair beside her. A great wash of his scent—warm, musky, _boy_-smell, with a tiny hint of his shampoo—swept over her and Hermione couldn't help breathing deeply. He sat despondently; shoulders slumped, watching his hands, looking completely miserable.

"I… I've never been very good at meeting new people," Draco whispered hoarsely, eyes watering as he played with the twisted hemp bracelet on his right wrist. "I never know what to say, and then I...then I just end up insulting people so I don't have to talk at all."

"You're talking to me, aren't you," Hermione smiled playfully, nudging his arm. He glanced at her and after a second nodded, licked his lips and turned to the fireplace, where a small fire was dispelling the cold touch that seemed intrinsic with the house.

"You're different though… You don't care what other people think," Draco said quietly. Hermione chuckled softly, curling up in the armchair and watching Draco.

"Is that what you think?" she asked, smiling.

"If you do, you never show it," Draco said, glancing at her thoughtfully. "Nobody ever purposefully tries to hurt your feelings…except me. And that Brown girl." Hermione rolled her eyes. _So even Draco Malfoy noticed I liked Ron_, she thought, sighing. Love him as she did, Ron Weasley just pressed on her last nerve sometimes. After he'd ditched them last year she'd realised she couldn't be _in_-love with anyone that volatile. She did love him, though; he had always been one of her best friends, and she hoped that never had to change.

"Well, you know, it's all those times you called me 'Mudblood'. You sort of desensitised me to everything else," Hermione joked, and then bit her lip, realising she'd said the wrong thing as Draco's mask crumpled and he curled up as the tears splashed down his cheeks. Utterly appalled at herself, Hermione knelt up quickly and put her arms around Draco's neck, drawing him close to her in a hug. He froze for a few seconds, and Hermione smiled and inhaled quickly as he hugged her tight to his body, nestling his head in the crook of her neck. She was conscious of the fact her breasts were pressed flush against Draco's chest and his lips brushed against her bare skin, but she breathed in deeply, smiling as she smelled _Draco_._ He smells so good_…

"I'm sorry," she whispered into his neck. "I didn't mean that." Draco's chest rose and fell falteringly and he clung to her as if she was his last lifeline. _She_ felt like she could stay like this for the rest of eternity, held in Draco's strong, lean arms. But she leaned away from him: His eyelashes had clumped together because of the tears, and his eyes were an exquisite pale sapphire this close, and Hermione licked her lips nervously, stroking the fresh tears away from his cheeks with her thumbs, cupping his face tenderly. It was now or never, and she never wasted opportunities. Draco bit his lip nervously, watching her with wide eyes, and he sighed softly when she gently kissed his bottom lip. Breaking away, Hermione closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, savouring the warmth transferred from Draco's lips.

Draco's thumb rubbed softly against the bare skin her top exposed at her midriff and she smiled shyly as their heads came closer together. Draco kissed her tentatively—_is this his first kiss? He never wrote anything_…she sighed and traced her tongue against his lower-lip, and she almost gasped as he slipped his tongue into her mouth, massaging hers. She moaned softly and cupped his cheek, using his shoulder for support as her knees did an odd quaky thing. She laughed breathlessly as Draco slipped from the arm into the chair and tugged her down on top of him, laughing softly. Hermione moaned breathlessly as he instigated their next kiss, a hand at the back of her neck, the other playing with the hem of her top at her side, tentatively stroking the hot skin above the waist of her jeans with his thumb. Hermione straddled him and pressed her chest against his as she leaned over him and kissed him hotly. A gentle tinge coloured Draco's cheeks and Hermione smiled as she bent her head and kissed him again, working her hands underneath his t-shirt, running them over his hot skin.

Viktor had been a good kisser; her first. Cormac McClaggen had been in league with the giant squid. She'd never kissed Ron, or anyone else. But Draco was the best.

"You don't happen to have any hot-fudge sauce, do you?" she asked, and Draco broke away from her neck to blurt out a laugh of surprise. His cheeks flushed and he buried his face in her shoulder again as she giggled. She smiled down at him as he rested his head against the arm-rest, gazing up at her with a soft smile playing with the corners of his lips, and closed her eyes as she grazed her lips against his teasingly.

"Draco, my dear, I'm ho—oh! Oh my goodness!"

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**A.N.**: I'm evil. MWAHAHA!!!!!

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	10. Caught!

**Disclaimer**: Duh.

**Author's Note**: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! It's half-past midnight here in England, so I can officially say it!!! Yay! Have a very happy and safe (though maybe not sober) Christmas! Here's to all of you who have been so kind in reviewing my work so meticulously and who have put me on their Alert lists :D Merry Christmas.

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William flounced into the kitchen early the next morning, his face almost splitting in two with the most knowing and infuriating smirk Hermione had ever seen; she and Teddy exchanged a look and they both cringed and focused on their _Golden Nuggets_ cereal.

"We're all very proud," William said, and she and Teddy both shuddered and cringed with embarrassment. She wanted to curl up and die.

First Narcissa Malfoy had walked in on her and Draco yesterday afternoon, and then of course Phaedra had her lady-friends over for afternoon-tea yesterday when she got back home, and of course, Mrs Malfoy was always the first on her guest-list, and Hermione had been walking past the drawing-room, minding her own business, setting the following events into motion:

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"Phaedra, my darling, you will never believe what I walked in on earlier this afternoon," a vaguely familiar voice said delightedly, and Hermione stopped, cringed, and ducked away from the open double-doors just as the ladies inside the drawing-room hushed with baited breath for Narcissa Malfoy's news.

"I would only be guessing," Phaedra said dryly.

"_Your_ daughter and _my_ son were in Draco's bedroom," Mrs Malfoy giggled.

"Having sex?"

"No, just kissing. I think if I hadn't interrupted them, though, they may have…" She left the sentence hanging, leaving her mother's friends to gossip about Hermione's virtue and "what a rogue" that "handsome boy" was.

"I WOULD NOT!!!" Hermione yelped indignantly, and clapped a hand over her mouth, realising she'd been found out. _Shit_, she thought, and darted up the staircase, really hoping none of the women were wearing sensible shoes to reach the drawing-room doors before she reached the safety of the gallery.

It would have been alright, bearable, even, that her mother knew she'd been caught making out with Draco Malfoy in his bedroom when he was home-alone, had not Phaedra accepted the dinner-invitation to the Malfoys, which been issued after the Malfoys had come to the Notts for dinner.

"What are you going to wear tonight?" Phaedra asked, gliding into Hermione's dressing-room just as Hermione was going through the racks of new clothing Phaedra had bought her, looking for something to wear. "What do you think Draco would like to see you in? _Cellophane_, Hermione thought, smirking at the thought. Or hot-fudge sauce.

In the end, Hermione wore a black dress with several layers of origami-style folds and a very deep pin-tucked V-neck, a pair of diamond-patterned stockings and a little pair of black patent flats. She wasn't into wearing heels tonight. She needed to make a quick getaway should Lucius Malfoy start cursing her. _At least Bellatrix isn't there any more_, Hermione thought. That was a plus.

Another plus was the fact that Teddy already had plans with Blaise Zabini that evening, but on the other hand that meant the two of them—she and Draco—alone, together, was cause of great suspicion in their respective mothers, but their fathers were clueless and their wives did nothing to enlighten them. Hermione and Draco both had to endure their mothers' indulgent, knowing smirks in the drawing-room, which for Hermione was more torturous than her parents knew, because they didn't know what had happened to her in this room at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange.

"So why didn't you go to that party at Blaise Zabini's house?" Hermione asked quietly. Even though the room was very big, and they were sitting far away from their parents, sound seemed to carry further in here than in normal rooms.

"Mm…didn't think they'd want me there," Draco said, shrugging uncomfortably. "I'm not very popular with the old crowd these days."

"Why? Because you grew a conscience?" Hermione teased. "How'd you know they wouldn't like you there if you never went?" Draco rolled his eyes. _Yeah, we're going to do this again_, Hermione smirked. "The anticipation of death is much worse than death itself."

"So you and I both agree that the Slytherins are going to kill me," Draco frowned thoughtfully. "That's good to know, I suppose." Hermione laughed softly. "I'm surprised Theo went to that party. He never usually associates with anyone in our year."

"Keep your own company and you'll always have a favourable reply," Hermione smirked, and Draco laughed. She didn't like the attention she was getting from their mothers, and apparently it was making Draco nervous too.

"Do you want to go and hide in the library?" Draco asked quietly, his head lolling against the back of their sofa as Hermione tried to tune out both the indignant exclamations of her father arguing politics with Mr Malfoy and Mrs Malfoy's floaty, eloquent little giggles as their mothers shot them knowing looks.

"Absolutely," Hermione said hurriedly, and making the excuse of going to show Hermione the library, Draco led her out of the drawing-room and they both let out great sighs of relief in the quiet of the marble hallway. Draco indicated a side-passage and Hermione followed him down it, examining a few of the portraits along the way, whilst Draco commented on the house and the antiques that interested her.

"Here, wait—" Draco said, and he put his hand over her eyes. Hermione grabbed his hand, jumping.

"What're you—?"

"Shh. It's a surprise," Draco said, and Hermione could tell by the playful lilt in his voice that he was smiling. She heard a door click and Draco's other hand fluttered to her waist, his body pressed close against her back, and he guided her through the door she couldn't see. When he released her eyesight, Hermione stared, open-mouthed. The library was three-storeys with a winding cast-iron spiral staircases and galleries on each level, a candlelit seating-area in the middle of the floor and a glorious marble fireplace that washed warmth into the room and kept the bite of chill away from the books.

But his literary collection wasn't what Draco wanted to talk about, and actually Hermione had known he didn't want to talk the minute she'd shown up with a glorious eyeful of cleavage on display and he couldn't stop shooting intense, covetous glances at her all through dinner. 'Mad-dogging,' Dean Thomas called it.

"Now, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?" Draco asked, gently tugging on her earlobe with his teeth, wrapping his arms loosely around her waist, resting his hands on her stomach. Hermione laughed breathlessly and glanced over her shoulder; Draco smirked gently and placed a kiss on her cheek. She twisted in his arms, so his hands ended up on her butt and she rested hers on his shoulders, and he gently navigated her behind one of the aisles so they were hidden from the door.

"Draco, we shouldn't," Hermione gasped softly, as Draco gently placed his lips on her neck and started sucking that point right beneath her ear that made her knees wobble and quake, his hand smoothing the fabric of her dress up from her waist, and her heartbeat was hammering in her chest as Draco's warm fingertips traced the neckline of her dress. She cradled his face in her hands and smiled gently; _To hell with Lucius,_ and Draco gave her a roguish grin before capturing her lips in the most passionate, heated kiss she'd ever experienced in her life. She couldn't breathe and her mind was going blank, white hot with energy, and she gasped, uncertain how to feel when Draco slipped his hand under the fabric of her dress and her bra and cupped her breast.

"Your father will kill me," Hermione laughed breathlessly, placing her hand atop Draco's, capturing Draco's lips, slipping her tongue into his mouth and moaning as he gently squeezed her breast and pressed her against the bookcase, pressing his body against hers so all she could feel, see, smell, was Draco.

"At least you would die a very happy girl," Draco smirked, his lips plump and bruised from kissing.

"You cocky little—mm," Hermione moaned, allowing him access with his tongue, as his hand gently massaged her breast. With kissing, she realised, he only had to do it once to have enough confidence to do it expertly a hundred times over again. She wasn't complaining.

"Draco, Miss Granger, where are—what on earth are you doing?" Hermione gasped and Draco jumped, and they both stared with wide eyes, like baby deer witnessing the hunter shooting their mother-doe dead, as Mr Malfoy gaped at them, horrified. _He's still groping you_, Hermione thought, glancing down at the same time as both Malfoy men did. Draco whipped his hand out of her dress and Hermione righted her neckline, feeling extremely hot under the collar. She was sure Mr Malfoy could see her lips pulsing from Draco's kisses.

"I would've thought that was quite obvious," said another voice, and William appeared, smirking smugly, but with the air of his friend having discovered Flobberworms wiggled about to move.

"Hermione, Draco!" called a lyrical voice, and Draco and Hermione both cringed visibly in humiliation as their mothers entered the library after their husbands.

"Er…we're just about to leave, Hermione," Phaedra said gently, and by the way her lips were twitching, Hermione could tell she was fighting the impulse to burst out laughing. "Say goodbye to Draco."

And with that they left.

Just left the room, as if nothing had happened, as if they hadn't caught Draco groping their dinner-guest in the darkened library.

"I think we should abstain from sex until they're all dead," Draco mused, and Hermione agreed with a hollow laugh. She was absolutely mortified, and apparently Draco was vibrating on the same wavelength; would they ever get through a make-out session without either of four parents walking in on them.

"They'd rise from the grave en masse," she said in a low voice. She glanced at Draco. He regarded her silently for a few seconds, cast a glance at the closed library door and Hermione gasped as he jumped her again and tried not to laugh out-loud in surprise, but extremely pleased, when he started kissing the life out of her. A few minutes later, and Draco gently pressed his lips against hers and tugged on her lower-lip with his teeth, nudging her nose affectionately with his, staring into her eyes.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" he whispered, stroking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and trailing the tips of his clever fingers down her throat and making her shiver deliciously.

"I… I don't know," she said honestly, and that made her nervous. Draco's eyes were doing that soft grey thing and he kept glancing at her lips as he moved her subtly backwards until she was close to the wall, his arms wrapped around her waist, hugging her close.

"Can I see you?" Draco asked softly, his lips teetering fractions of an inch closer to hers. She nodded, willing him to move just that fraction of an inch closer, nodded again and Draco obliged her, and Hermione felt her chest expand like someone had pumped a great balloon inside her, and she loved Draco's tender kisses as much as she loved his passionate fuck-it-all making-out. He trailed tentative kisses along her jaw and chuckled deep in his throat when her knees did that quaky thing as he sucked gently on her neck at that point below her ear. _Okay, now you really have to go_, she thought, feeling heat well between her thighs, an odd tingly sensation going up and down her spine, and their parents' voices somewhere down the corridor. _I'm surprised they've let us alone this long_, she thought.

The adults were perfectly cordial in greeting them from the library—once Hermione had smoothed her hair and corrected her dress, which Draco had gone down again and which she had thoroughly enjoyed, and Draco had corrected the buttons of his shirt, which she'd been toying with before Mr Malfoy had caught them—and Mrs Malfoy kissed Hermione's cheek upon goodbyes and Mr Malfoy just stared, as if he couldn't quite understand what was going on, but by the looks he shot his wife he was sure she would explain it for him.

"_Bye_ Draco," Phaedra beamed teasingly, and Draco's cheeks tinged pale pink: Catching her eye, they both blushed and smiled and looked away as she got into her family's sleek pale-gold car. Luckily, Phaedra and William were both in the front and Hermione had put a book in her bag, _just in case_, and now she buried her face in it, her heart still fluttering wildly, the feel of Draco's lips still _there_ on her lips and her throat and—she couldn't suppress a smile and licked her lips—her boobs. She'd worn the bra he liked, the dark-brown one with the gold lace, that gave her a really good boost. _Oh, yes, he likes this bra a lot_, she thought, adjusting the neckline of her top nervously as Phaedra caught her eye, glancing back at her with a friendly smile, and she buried her face in her book again.

"Well at least it's not the _Kama Sutra_," she remarked softly, and Hermione shivered and her entire body burned in embarrassment. They reached the house and William unlocked the front-door.

"We'll come and say goodnight before we go to bed, sweetheart," William said, leaning to kiss her. "Keep your mouth closed." Hermione rolled her eyes and flushed with humiliation as her dad pecked her cheek, and Phaedra giggled. It was late, so Hermione went straight to her and Teddy's wing and frowned bemusedly as she heard some rather disconcerting noises echoing softly down the gallery. The portraits all giggled, running to and from each other's frames, and Hermione frowned as she drew closer to Teddy's bedroom, the door of which was ajar.

"Teddy, we're—_OH MY GOD!!!_" Hermione gasped loudly, her eyes wide as saucers as she saw the scene before her.

Teddy. _Her Teddy_ gaped at her, propped up (naked but for his sheets) over a very slender tousled-blonde girl, whose top had been tossed across the room with her shoes and the most ridiculously-tiny pair of cut-off shorts in the world, and whose willowy legs were wrapped around Teddy. She had very obviously walked in on them having sex. Teddy was kind of sweaty and the girl was gasping for breath and the sheets were a tangled mess.

"_Teddy_!"

"Er…"

"What the hell are you thinking? Mum and Dad are home!" Hermione whispered. She grabbed hold of the doorknob and slammed the door behind her, just as she saw William striding down the gallery towards them.

"You weren't supposed to be home 'til late," Teddy panted subtly.

"Ted! Hermione!" Hermione's eyes, if possible, grew wider as Teddy's bedroom door burst open and their parents appeared. William spluttered; Phaedra gaped incredulously, looking between both of her children, and the poor girl pinned beneath Teddy looked around uncomfortably at anything that was inanimate.

"_Teddy!_" Phaedra gasped.

"…I think I'm gonna go home," the blonde said quietly, covering her bare chest with her arms. Hermione picked up the girl's clothes and tossed them to her; it didn't make much of a difference; the top was a tiny silky camisole slip, orangey in colour, with tiny halter-straps, and the shorts were at most six inches from hip to hem. The girl cast Hermione a thankful glance before stooping to collect her boots and hastening out of the bedroom. Teddy glanced after her with soft, wistful eyes. _Oh, how _much_ we have in common_, Hermione thought in sarcastic delight.

"Come on, honey, let's leave these two alone," Phaedra said gently, sounding slightly stunned. "No exchanging sex-tips when we're gone." It was Hermione's turn to splutter indignantly.

"Sounds like Teddy knows what he's doing," William scoffed, and Phaedra had to forcibly drag her husband out of the room. The door closed and the two siblings glanced awkwardly at each other.

"So…who was that?"

"Marilis du Maurier," Teddy said, hugging his knees to his chest, his sheets pulled taut over his knees. He ran a hand through his hair and Hermione saw his chest rising and falling frantically, trying to regain his breath. _Probably shocked the hell out of him_, Hermione thought. _Well GOOD. I'm sick of _them_ always interrupting Draco and me._

"Marilis. Isn't she that slutty girl in Slytherin?" Hermione asked interestedly. She'd never seen much of Marilis; now she thought she could die without seeing Marilis _ever_ again.

"Er…she _is_ in Slytherin," Teddy said awkwardly. _And she's slutty_, Hermione thought, admiring her brother because he didn't feel comfortable calling the girl he'd just been caught having sex with a slut. It showed excellent breeding in his character.

"Um…do you want me to leave?"

"Er—yeah. No, hang on—why'd Mum say not to share sex tips? What have _you_ been up to?" Teddy asked, narrowing his eyes scrutinisingly. "Hang on a minute! Draco didn't come to the party today—I _knew_ it! I _knew_ something was going to happen. Come here, tell me what happened."

Hermione gaped.

"You _knew_?"

"Well if _course_," Teddy said, as if she was incredibly thick, which she felt at that particular moment. Possibly it was much too late and she had been mentally traumatised too many times tonight. She knelt on the bench at the end of Teddy's bed, which hid his Hogwarts trunk beneath, and Teddy quickly put some clothes on.

"So Draco told you he likes you?"

"No. I read it."

"Read it where?"

"His journal."

"He let you read his _journal_!"

"_No_. I sort of…stole it."

"Sneak."

"Whore."

"Touché."

"So earlier this afternoon we were kissing, and Mrs Malfoy walked in on us. And this evening, we were kissing and Draco was groping me and Mr Malfoy caught us in the library," Hermione said, flustered and red-faced. It was _weird_, talking about her romantic life with her _brother_, of all people, _But if you cant talk to him, who else are you going to talk to about it? Ron? Harry? Ha! They're hardly more experienced than you are…Hermione, you're more experienced than both_.

"Wow," Teddy said softly, and Hermione nodded, her adrenaline from her make-out session with Draco wearing thin.

"So what about you? How did you end up with Marilis?"

"Well…it starts with a case of spiked Butterbeers," Teddy said, and Hermione laughed softly. "I don't know… She's really nice. She's not…she's not how other people think she is." Hermione nodded thoughtfully and listened to Teddy describing the party and the people he'd been hanging out with. So they stayed up for another hour talking about, well, first their unfortunate experiences of the day, and then about everything and anything they could think of, giggling so madly tears streamed down their cheeks and Hermione's stomach hurt.

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**A.N.**: To _caterpuff_, I hope this chapter was awkward for you ;P Next chapter: The Talk. Mwahaha!

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	11. The Talk: Part One

**Author's Note**: I HAVE REACHED 2936 WORDS IN MY COURSEWORK ESSAY!!!!! YAY!!!! So, as a celebratory gesture, I have decided to upload this partial-chapter to say thank you to everyone who's wished me luck with my work and been _extremely_ patient with me for not updating for about a month! I hope none of you have had any major withdrawal symptoms!

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It made Hermione physically ill every time she thought about being caught being groped by Draco Malfoy—not that she hadn't enjoyed Draco's hands all over her—it was more to do with the fact that it had been her parents who had caught her. And she absolutely loathed William for those teasing looks and taunting anecdotes he shot at her every time she entered the same room as him. It didn't make figuring out what she and Draco _were_ exactly any easier considering the only times they'd been left alone together they hadn't done much talking and they'd always been interrupted.

"Going out?" Teddy asked nonchalantly, scribbling in his Transfiguration textbook. Hermione grunted softly as she strode towards her dressing room, a towel wrapped around her head and one around her body, shivering at the change of temperature. Compared to the under-floor heating of the bathroom the carpet was inexcusably cold.

"Draco's taking me to the fair," Hermione sighed. She wasn't all that thrilled about the roller-coasters—she'd never liked heights _or_ throwing up her meals, but Draco had promised her they could just have a go at the games and _talk_. Hermione knew it was essential they talked; that was the only reason he wanted to take her out, so soon after last night's episode with their parents, to talk about what they were now. She had no idea. She liked kissing him, but if that was all they were going to be…No; she was too emotionally involved with him for that to be enough.

It wasn't a date, technically, and the county fair at the park wasn't exactly a five-star restaurant, so Hermione decided to dress down; she tugged on a distressed denim mini-skirt and one of the little silk spaghetti-strap camisole tops Phaedra had bought her; it was teal blue with contrasting floral patterns on it, a lace-edged deep V-neckline and a ruffled hem. She clasped a necklace of bronze and teal-blue charms around her throat and put her hair down in tousled waves and tucked a pair of mirrored Aviator sunglasses into a brown leather handbag; she tugged on a pair of buckle-detail brown boots from TopShop and made sure she had cash and her Sirius before exiting the dressing-room to turn to her dressing-table and her quickly-expanding collection of cosmetics. _Looking nice takes so much time_, she thought with a heavy sigh, noting her armchair was empty; Teddy was next-door listening to ELO.

No day was complete without both of her parents putting their two-galleons in and it was William who first broached the subject of that dreaded three-letter word. _Sex_.

"You look incredible!" William said enthusiastically, and his eyebrows lowered dramatically—"Get in the kitchen!" Teddy, who had thrown on a smart shirt with his jeans and run a comb through his hair, shared quirked eyebrows with Hermione, shrugging his leather jacket on and pocketing his Sirius: he was going to see Marilis.

"Listen…" William sighed heavily, looking extremely uncomfortable as he propped himself up on his elbows over the marble island in the kitchen. Hermione waited tentatively, wondering what would come out of her father's mouth next. _Just tell them you've already had the Talk_, Hermione urged herself, but she couldn't, both because she didn't want to draw attention to the fact that her face was flaming like a Weasley at the thought of having to discuss sex with her father and the fact that she would have to admit she'd already had the Talk with her adoptive-parents.

"So how is your dating situation going?" William asked, eyeing her scrutinisingly.

"Good," Hermione shrugged. _Despite you and Mum and the Malfoys all conspiring against us to never give us a moment's peace together!_ she thought, annoyed.

"By that limited response, I suppose you believe it to be none of my business," William said in a low voice, nodding to himself. Hermione tilted one shoulder noncommittally. "Alright, listen closely, 'cause I'm only going to say this once, and it makes me feel yucky, so—I'm supposed to give you some fatherly—and _wise_—advice at this time in your life."

"Dad—" Hermione stammered.

"No, wait, let me get this out. If you are ever wondering if a boy is thinking about you, he isn't. He's thinking about sex or he's hungry; those are the only two options," William said, and Hermione laughed, feeling a little less embarrassed. No matter what, William could put a comical spin on any situation.

"Are you _trying_ to be funny?" Hermione giggled softly.

"Well, you have two male best-friends, I'm sure you understand the workings of the male mind more than most girls your age can boast," William said quietly, "but I wanted to say something else, which is that boys think about sex every minute of the day. That is what they do; that is why they lie. They're going to leave you waiting for them to write to you and they _won't_ write to you. They're going to be charming and misleading." Hermione smiled softly, appreciating the fact that her dad cared about her enough to stand there squirming in front of her as he tried to talk about sex and relationships to the daughter he'd known for maybe a few weeks.

"Have you finished?" she asked, smirking gently. William sighed again, smoothing her hair away from her shoulders and cupping her face tenderly.

"You are beautiful, you are sensitive, and you are smart, and I don't want to see you get hurt," William said. Hermione smiled, gazing up another foot to meet her father's eyes.

"I love you, too, Dad," she said softly. William smiled.

"Keep your mouth closed," he said, looming closer to kiss her cheek. Hermione rolled her eyes and smiled. "Do you have money for tonight?"

"Er…a few galleons," Hermione said, checking her coin-purse. William rifled through his pocket and dropped a few coins into the palm he grabbed. "Thanks."

"Don't elope with that," William warned. Hermione rolled her eyes again and William chuckled. She left the kitchen and quickened her pace when she saw Draco was being cornered by Phaedra in the foyer.

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**A.N.**: The next instalment will feature Hermione/Draco out at the fair and then Phaedra's take on the birds-and-bees talk. Be prepared to squirm for Phaedra's sake!

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	12. Two Things

**A.N.**: Hiya! Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support for this fic, and I'm really sorry to have kept you waiting so long—on top of coursework, exam re-sits, I now have conjunctivitis and a _cold_! An overactive imagination and this whole week off sixth-form college has led me to post three new stories! but unfortunately that lethargic thing called 'writer's block' still _won't go away_. So, to cure myself of that, if I can't cure myself instantly of my other ailments, I have decided that this chapter will _not_ be from Hermione's point-of-view. I'd wanted to keep it strictly to what Hermione knew, but that's just not working for me for this chapter, so…

**A.N.2**: Oh: I've also decided I no longer like what I dressed Hermione in the last chapter, so I'm changing it.

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Draco waited at the gate, frowning bemusedly up at the Notts' house, glancing into the trees on one side and the lake at the other, wondering from which—like Odysseus between Charybdis and Scylla—he could get away from if an emergency arose in the form of William Nott brandishing his wand. And he was scarcely less afraid of Mrs Nott, or of Theo, emerging from the great house to castrate him before he could plead his innocence.

_I was only groping her_, Draco thought, wishing he hadn't, because the memory of Hermione's breasts in his hands, the warmth transmitting from those gentle swells to his cool palms still fresh in his mind, caused all the blood to rush downwards, and he had to take a few deep breaths and wait a little bit longer before he could approach the house.

When finally he strode up the gravel pathway to the front-doors, they burst open and Mrs Nott appeared, resplendent in beautiful pearl-pink silk robes, the scariest glower on her face Draco had ever seen on anyone—including her daughter right before she'd punched him in the face. He stopped, wary, eyeing Mrs Nott. _Is she going to hit me too? You _were_ caught groping her only daughter_, Draco thought. Mrs Nott closed the door behind her and stood with her hands on her slim waist, glaring down at him from the top step.

"I feel it is my duty to talk to you as Hermione's mother. I know you two are not serious, however considering what happened last night I feel I should warn you…Hurt her," she warned with a growl, "and I will _flog_ you to within an inch of your life. I will flog you 'til your entrails become your _extrails_—I will—all the—" She was rendered speechless by her emotions, and satisfied herself with miming throttling someone's neck. "_Pain_," she declared at last, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Lots of pain!"

Draco had to keep himself from laughing. He had never seen Mrs Nott so discomposed.

"Mum!" Hermione appeared, poking her head out of the front-doors. She gave Mrs Nott a faintly reproving look, raising her eyebrows, and Mrs Nott grumbled and turned back to the house.

"Alright then, have a good time," she sighed heavily, closing the doors behind her, shooting Draco one last malevolent glare. He glanced from Mrs Nott's retreating face to Hermione: she was wearing a fluttery white chiffon top off her slim shoulders that had purple at the hem and sleeves, a pair of tight skinny dark jeans, and the delicacy of her top was offset by the dangerous edge of her four-inch black patent platforms with black elastic bands across her feet. Three thin gold strands looped around her neck and glinted in the gauzy folds of her top near her waist with little filigree details and beads, and her hair was loose and naturally tousled. She'd wiped off the excess of a deep plum lipstick to leave the sumptuous residue of colour behind and coated her lashes with black mascara. She looked so _grown up_ with lipstick on, he couldn't understand why.

"You look pretty," Draco smiled. She really did. Hermione wasn't one of the more traditionally 'beautiful' girls that Hogwarts sometimes boasted. She was pretty and intelligent, and that far outshone any oversized bust or shiny hair. In Draco's mind, anyway. The one reason he liked Hermione so much—or the idea of being with her—was that he knew he could carry a conversation with this girl and they wouldn't have to resort to 'necking', as Blaise called it, all the time to have something to do; _then_, if that was the case, the girl would probably call the relationship shallow and end it. If Hermione was to break up with him—if they were actually _in_ a relationship—he knew it wouldn't be for that reason. For his being a Death Eater could be one reason. That none of her friends liked him could be another. That his parents had despised the very idea of her existence before this summer. That his aunt had tortured her.

Yeah—she had a myriad of reasons to choose from to break up with him. But he would never let her claim it was because they went two weeks without a meaningful conversation.

"Did you have a nice chat with my mum?" Hermione asked, and the corners of her tinted lips turned up in a delicate smirk.

"We came to an understanding," Draco smiled. There was no way he was going to hurt Hermione. As he had just been debating with himself, _she_ would be the one to end the relationship. He could conceive no problem with _her_. She was absolutely lovely.

And she had the most amazing pair of legs he'd ever seen inside a pair of those Muggle '_jeans'_. _Nice bum, too,_ he thought, checking out her backside as she started walking down the path, glancing over her shoulder and flashing a sweet smile. He shook his head and strode after her to catch up.

"So, have you ever been to a wizard fair before?" Draco asked interestedly. He'd been to a Muggle circus—_once_. He'd pleaded and pleaded with his mother for days before she finally caved (she couldn't deny Draco anything) and the clown had knocked his candy-floss over and his mother had run onto the little platform area, snatched the poor clown's wig, and let it be known she wouldn't give it back despite security unless he bought Draco another cotton-candy. He did, and it was twice as large as the first, and Draco vomited three times after he'd finished it (give or take a few rides on a wooden roller-coaster). He knew being sick had been the fault of the candy-floss, so he wasn't squeamish about roller-coasters.

"Never a wizard fair, but I've been to lots of Muggle carnivals at summertime," Hermione smiled. "My parents—the Grangers, not—" she sighed exasperatedly, and he could tell she was still confused, as she had been the day she'd spilled everything to him, "we used to go and have daytrips all throughout the summer; they would save up their holidays and we'd go to the zoo and London and the beach."

"Do you like roller-coasters?" Draco asked eagerly.

"I _love_ them!" Hermione grinned. "Which is really strange, because I absolutely hate flying."

"Muggle roller-coasters have all the pieces attached," Draco remarked. "That's probably why."

"Yes, I suppose," Hermione grinned. "And there are teams on-call if the rides ever break down to rescue you. Have you ever been to Disneyworld? I suppose not, because you're a pureblood."

"Blaise has been," Draco said excitedly. "He said it's amazing—and _Universal Studios_ has a really enormous green roller-coaster. Blaise showed me a picture of it—"

"The _Hulk_," Hermione gasped excitedly. "I went on that thing _five times_. Mum was almost having an aneurism. I get my fear of flying from her. She gets antsy."

"Did your parents—the Grangers—take you to Disneyland?" Draco asked. He'd wanted to go, when Blaise showed him the photographs, and told him about a restaurant named _Kobe_ that served Japanese food, and swimming with scarred manatees Muggles had thought were mermaids once-upon-a-time. In June, he and Blaise had gone to Blackpool to ride on the Muggle _Pepsi Max_, so Draco knew what it was like to ride the biggest roller-coaster in the UK. Blaise was never about paddling in the shallow end; to introduce anyone to anything, he shoved them into the deep end without armbands. No teacups for Draco.

"Yes. The summer-before-last," Hermione sighed wistfully. "I was looking at pictures of our holiday the other day. It seems so _long ago_."

"The last real holiday I went on was…my parents had been invited by Blaise's mother to share her hotel-reservations in Austria," Draco sighed. He absolutely _loved_ Muggle skiing. Anything that gave him an adrenaline rush, the impending doom of not knowing whether he'd wipe out in the snow-drift or break his neck failing to nail a ten-foot jump [A.N.: My brother did that!] and drinking his way through the _Gasthoff_'s supply of Glühwein afterwards, or maybe sinking down onto the marble seat in the sauna for a few hours.

"My parents like skiing," Hermione said, with a tiny sigh. "I always got too squeamish about the snowboarders. They're so _obnoxious_." [A.N.: No offence; I'm a skier myself!]

"Well, I'll just have to take you where no Muggle-born has ever gone before," Draco smirked. Theo's parents were planning to go to the _Gasthoff Gansleit_ for a week after Christmas day, as they did almost every year, and the owners of the hotel really liked their wit (and money) so they didn't have to book as far ahead as the Muggle guests, and they had already asked Draco and his parents if they wanted to go together.

"Are you propositioning me, Mr Malfoy?" Hermione asked, smirking playfully.

"Indeed I am," Draco grinned. "Ask your parents if they're going skiing this Christmas. I'll take you to the slopes only wizards can access." _Ones Muggles have no access to because they can't Apparate_, he thought. And no wizards snowboarded, either. "I used to want to move to Austria. You'd get to snow to and from school in the wintertime."

"You'd fit right in," Hermione laughed, eyeing him up with a smirk.

"Blonde hair, blue eyes; ah, yes," Draco rolled his eyes amusedly. Yes, he and his parents were the perfect example of the 'superior' Aryan race. Oh, Hitler would be so _proud_ of them. Not to mention the link between what Hitler had been doing and what Voldemort had been attempting to do was so fine they could mesh the two together and they'd still have the same monster. Draco wasn't hot on the dictators—although he had to be more sympathetic to the Mussolini because Blaise's mother was part-Italian—and he felt sure Hermione knew all about them. Hermione knew all about everything. _Except_ wizard roller-coasters.

* * *

It was late-afternoon when they reached the wizard fairgrounds. In the middle of the countryside, across a great spread of beautiful green meadows, the fair spread out from a temporarily-erected black metal fence, everything decorated with glittering fairy-lights, the only gate by the ticket-booth. Draco paid for entry into the fair and had a lot of money in his pockets for the rides and games, and inside he smiled and took Hermione's hand in his. She glanced at their linked hands and gave him a small smile, and from that moment on she walked closer to him, sometimes brushing his hand against her outer-thigh as they walked around.

First there were the little children's rides; teacups, flying-carpets, carousels of extremely realistic _clip-clopping_ unicorns and jewel-toned dragons and a really cool mini Ferris-wheel Draco wished he was still small enough to ride; the compartments were enormous bucket-shaped sea-shells with fluttering canopies lit up by fairies and ropes of more shells keeping the giggling and giddily shrieking children in their confines. Past the children's area was the marketplace; stalls from every wizard shop, from Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley especially, had set up their wares, taking advantage of the huge turnout. Apart from the high-street distributors, there were also individuals who had brought their handmade things, like an ex-carpenter who made beautiful smooth bowls and potpourri pots, and a young woman who made and sold her own delicate jewellery.

Draco, ever the forward-thinker, had asked Hermione when her birthday was; she was going to be seventeen on September the nineteenth. Among the fine pieces of (expensive, relatively) jewellery, Draco found a beautiful bracelet of platinum heart-shaped links with one link that was a little larger, and of gold. It was pretty and delicate. He didn't care if they didn't really go out properly; he liked her and that was all that mattered; he would give her that bracelet for her seventeenth birthday even if they were only friends.

"Who are you buying these for?" Hermione asked, examining the bracelet he held looped over his fingers so it dangled from them, catching the light, and the exquisite little platinum snowdrop that was barely half an inch in height, and the earrings that matched.

"Oh, my other girlfriends," Draco shrugged nonchalantly, putting the earrings back; Mother always wore the same diamond solitaires his father had given her on _her_ seventeenth birthday. But they had been going out for a year already. He had just met Hermione; he'd go for a precious metal rather than a gem.

"Your other… So am _I_ one of your girlfriends?" Hermione asked quietly, looking over the earrings. He glanced at Hermione. He knew _he_ wanted to settle on just what they were—because just kissing or just being friends was _not_ what he wanted; it would have broken his heart to think he might have had her and had lost her before he'd batted an eyelash—but he hadn't been so sure she wanted to bring it up. He hadn't thought the fair was an appropriate place to discuss their relationship with the depth he wanted to, but the fact she wanted to talk about it made him relax—even more so than he already was.

"If you want to be," he said quietly, glancing at her. A tiny smile had flitted over her lips as she examined another black velvet platter of earrings. He noticed that every time she swept her coffee-brown eyes over that single display flashing in the dying sunlight, she would always reach out half-heartedly for one particular pair of earrings.

"Do you want them?" he asked. She retracted her hand and shook her head, but she gazed at them again when she thought he wasn't looking. They were pretty, simple little things; a circle of hammered gold, with tiny links to a silver-winged chubby gold heart. He bought the bracelet and the earrings for Hermione; the woman smiled warmly at him and set the earrings in a tiny little decorative box and the bracelet in a slightly larger one, and he bought a stunning little platinum snowdrop pendant for his mother.

As they walked away, Draco handed her the littlest box.

"Draco, you didn't have to—" A gentle blush crept up her cheeks as Hermione opened the little box and the sunlight caught the fiery gold pieces lying on a bed of cotton-wool.

"You liked them," Draco said pointedly. He would give her anything she wanted. Even if it was old books. Even if he had to _carry_ them. "You got that look in your eye Theo gets when he's seen a book he obsesses over for three weeks before he goes back to buy it and it's already sold-out…Plus, with your colouring, they'd look lovely." She had the dark hair and golden complexion to pull off gold jewellery, and as she threaded the first pin through her piercing—Draco holding her little mauve-sequined bag and the three second-hand books she had bought, tied together with string—she secured it in place with the tiny butterfly-back, and did the same with the other earring. She shook her head, probably adjusting to the delicate weight of the earrings, and flicked her hair away behind her shoulders so the sunlight caught her in the face, illuminating the gold circles and glinting off the silver wings, winking off the hearts.

"They look lovely," he smiled, nodding.

"You didn't have to buy them for me," Hermione said gently, smiling softly. Her eyes glowed, never wavering from his. Draco blushed now, glancing at the floor. He glanced up again and caught sight of her lips.

"Will you be my girlfriend?" he asked, surprised at the nervous tremor in his voice. He'd just wanted to ask it before he lost his nerve, or more importantly before he forgot to. Hermione smiled, flashing the lovely white teeth that were so like her father's grin. "Then perhaps you can repay me for the earrings in-kind," he suggested, putting his arms around her waist, holding her closer. She laughed.

"You want me to pierce your ears, too," she teased.

"_No_," he said slowly, nudging her little nose gently with his. "How about a kiss?" She hummed softly, making a little thoughtful noise in her throat, and threaded her arms around his neck, and Draco had to fight the urge to sigh as she brushed her lips against his. His eyes slid closed, savouring the feel of her soft, supple lips against his, as he kissed her lips and tugged gently on her lower-lip with his teeth, smiling. Her lips tasted like the dark-cherries they were coloured with. Sweet and tangy at the same time. Taking his girlfriend's hand, he smiled and continued walking down the aisle of stalls.

There were so many people at the fair that Draco never saw anyone he actually _knew_—though by association he had to pretend to smile at people as they waved and greeted Hermione brightly and said nice things to her.

"You really know how to make friends and influence people," he remarked, smiling, as Hermione came away from a couple who had wanted her photograph taken with their new baby, red-faced and just _daring_ him to say anything. "I suppose if it happened to me I'd tell them to shove it." Hermione gave him a look and laughed, shaking her head. "Where to next? Are you going to come on the roller-coasters?" Hermione grinned, and they got in line for the longest, highest and fastest roller-coaster boasted in the back meadow where more of the teenaged crowd had gathered by the arcade-games and food-market.

"Have you heard from your parents since you moved out?" Draco asked.

"One letter. It's going to take six weeks for the container with all of their belongings to be shipped to Australia, so they've got another month here and then they'll rent a furnished flat before looking for a house," Hermione sighed, glancing at the roller-coaster as people screamed, zooming past in the dragon-inspired construction.

"Why did they decide to move? Could they just not stand being near you that much longer?" Draco teased. She laughed softly.

"_No_. Mum and Dad always said when my dad retired, my mum would sell the business and they'd move out to Australia," Hermione shrugged. "It was always something they'd wanted to do."

"Will you miss them?"

"Yes, I suppose. I mean, it'll be good when I can Apparate; I'll just be able to pop in for tea," she grinned, and Draco jumped on the opportunity to talk about Apparition. He'd heard they could start taking lessons in sixth-year. They stored their belongings in a magically-locked cubby-hole once they reached the front of the queue and Draco clamped the safety-bar down once he had sat down beside Hermione in their little cart.

"You ready?" Draco grinned. He absolutely loved roller-coasters. Loved the adrenaline rush as the wind-up began, the jittery feeling that passed through his limbs as the carts were _clanked_ up to the starting-point. He glanced at Hermione, who was grinning apprehensively, no doubt waiting like he was for the plunge. He swore when the cart jerked, and Hermione's high scream turned within seconds to a continuous stream of delicious laughter. Tears from the air rushing past his face slipped from his eyes as he grinned and yelled, feeling his stomach plunge and twist, jump into his throat and go down to his feet as the roller-coaster rolled around and around, flipped and doubled-back, shot straight into the air, flipped backwards and they plummeted back.

* * *

"Well, I must say I'm glad _my_ girlfriend can handle a little roller-coaster," Draco smiled, putting his arm around Hermione's shoulders as they collected their belongings—glancing with a wrinkled nose at the girl now vomiting into a rubbish-bin, decidedly weak-kneed when she had stumbled off the ride. Hermione giggled, looked a little bit ashamed and tucked her head closer into his shoulder. "So, what next?" While they had waited in the queue, Draco had spied the Honeyduke's stand; _that_ was their next port-of-call, after the butcher who was selling barbecued sausages in soft rolls with a table spread with condiments, several tables set aside for anyone to grab, and after a sausage bun for dinner, Draco bought Hermione a plate of apple slices drowned in warm caramel she'd practically drooled over, and freshly-made candy-floss of his favourite taste; cherry-brandy. Honeyduke's made all different flavours, including every single one of the Bertie Bott's concoctions, and things like Blood and Cockroach Cluster had been broken down into liquid form to add to the spun-sugar. And they shared their treats—although Hermione didn't let him have all of the caramel like he'd wanted! He focused on his candy-floss, frowning, as it dissipated with a tingly feeling left on his tongue. Hermione laughed softly.

"What's funny?" he asked, smiling.

"Just something my dad said just before we left," Hermione smiled, shaking her head slightly.

"Oh, what was that?" Draco asked interestedly. Whatever William had to say was always worth listening to—unless it was _politics_. Draco despised politics, mostly because his father loved them so much.

"Er…that boys only have two things on their minds," Hermione said, blushing again. Draco laughed, tearing a bit of candy-floss away from the folded paper cone.

"Mating and eating," he said thoughtfully, glancing at her for confirmation. How many times had he thought about Hermione's boobs in the last two hours? Her chiffon top was kind of see-through at times, particularly when she was standing blocking the sun, and he knew she was wearing a very pretty strapless white-lace bra trimmed with a black satin seam under the bust and a black bow decorated with a tiny oval diamante charm. And because she wore the top off her shoulders, whenever she bent at the waist to examine something at one of the stalls, or pick up a toy a child had dropped, he got a view of her cleavage, and instantly he always got the vision of dipping his finger—or _something else_—down it.

"At least you're honest," Hermione laughed, and Draco smiled nervously, wondering if she could tell he was hard. He _was_ wearing his favourite pair of relaxed, broken-in dark jeans, not a pair of smart pinstriped trousers he usually did when he had to be a host for guests at dinner-parties. _Those_ made it really obvious, and Draco's father had given him _The Talk_ as soon as the Notts had left that evening they'd been caught in the library—after Mother had told him what was going on, of course.

Nothing in his entire life had made him squirm more than his father trying to explain about penises and vaginas and birth-control and the stages of pregnancy "should you forget to use protection": his father hadn't been too impressed that he'd asked about sexually-transmitted diseases; the question had apparently stumped him, and Draco was still waiting for his father to get back to him with the answer. He glanced at the candy-floss; his appetite had gone entirely, and Hermione was happy to wrap locks of cotton-candy around her tongue and tear it off the paper cone. _That doesn't help_, he thought with a moan, watching her. _William definitely knows everything. Sex and food._

After they had finished eating—his appetite had returned remarkably, watching Hermione eat, delicately working with her tongue—Draco found his arm around Hermione's shoulders, hers around his waist, and they turned to the games that boasted large ticket bonuses that could be traded at the prize-booth for ginormous plush toys or cheap jewellery.

"I'm no good at these sorts of games, alright, I've warned you," Hermione said, frowning solemnly at him. Draco smiled and handed the man tending the first game—firing sparks at as many faux Diricawls as you could in a certain amount of time—several coins to start the rotating levers. Hermione took her stance; knees slightly bent, feet slightly wide apart, eyes narrowed; waiting. She hit the high-score and got the highest number of prize-tickets, and the man working the stall grumbled and Draco thought it best to go to another game as Hermione laughed delightedly.

"You're my good-luck charm," she grinned happily, folding the long length of blue tickets to a manageable size. Draco went at the next game—quidditch oriented, he had to stand in a netted aisle and hit as many Bludgers away from him as he could. He didn't do as well as Hermione, but he'd never been particularly brilliant at Seeking, his starting position, either. A huge tank of water had been erected and a feeble old wizard sat in a lawn-chair waiting for someone to hit the bulls-eye of the target. All the proceeds of funding the inevitable splash went to a werewolf rights campaign. Hermione took her place in the queue with decisiveness and Draco smiled as she frowned, arms crossed over her chest, probably wondering just how many people in the line were actually interested in picking up the pamphlets set up at the table by the paying booth, or whether they just wanted to see an old man dunked into a vat of freezing-cold water. Draco thought the same thing.

"You know what, by the looks of this line, I am going to go and trade in my tickets for some _fantastic_ prizes," Draco smiled, and Hermione smiled back, "and I'll be back and help you aim."

"I saw your Bludger score, Draco," she smirked. "I think I can do with_out_ your help!"

"Ouch!" He grinned, eyes closed, as she pressed her lips to his, and backed away, not wanting to let go of her warm hand, but he did, and he got in line for the plush-animal prizes. He had to wait ten minutes for the queue of screaming, crying children and necking teenagers to dissipate and finally got to trade in his tickets. He scanned the (lower) racks of toys made available to him by his meagre winnings. _What would she like?_ There were mini-Demiguises and Clabberts with real glowing pustules in their foreheads, fairies, Fire Crabs, rows of vibrant mini-Fwoopers, Griffins and Hippogriffs, and Mooncalves. And then there were the traditional cute non-magical animals; bunny-rabbits, cats, puppies, elephants and tigers, and a little baby-otter, clutching a pearl-pink conch-shell. It was maybe eight inches tall and when Draco had exchanged his tickets for it, lovely and soft.

* * *

By the time he had turned back to the dunking-station, he noticed that Hermione was talking to somebody. Somebody who was tall and lanky and had a head of vibrant red hair, and whose words, by Hermione's expression, were extremely upsetting. Draco glowered; _Weasley_. He saw Hermione's jaw jut to one side as her eyes hardened, glassy, on a spot in the grass off to the other side, chin tucked down, except to snap a harsh retort at her friend. Her eyes sparkling, Draco stalked over to her. Before he reached her, he stopped, making a show of checking the soles of his shoes, finally leaning on her shoulder for balance as he checked them properly.

"I must have stepped in something, but I can't see—Oh," he made a point of eyeing Weasley from the shoes up, wrinkling his nose disgustedly at the freckled face. "Never mind. I was wondering where the stench was coming from."

"What do _you_ want, _Malfoy_," Weasley snapped harshly.

"Oh! I'm on a date, Weasley, with a girl," Draco said lightly, smirking briefly. "Can I ask what _you_ were doing upsetting her?" He waited for the words to sink in, internally relishing the feeling of having one-upped Weasley. And Potter, too, he supposed; he knew today he had officially stolen their girl.

"Very funny, Malfoy, now shove off while I talk to my friend," Weasley spat. Draco laughed condescendingly—he was very good at laughing different ways to piss people off.

"Well, it seems to me like you _were_ talking before, but I don't think the aim of a conversation with a _friend_ is to _upset them_," he glared.

"If you're looking for a fight, Malfoy—"

"Save it," Draco snapped. "Hermione and I are here on a date, having a good time. Do yourself a favour and don't ruin it any more than you've already tried to. Save whatever petty words you were trying to sting her with and get over the fact that her circumstances have changed." _So there!_ Draco thought, wishing he could stick his tongue out instead of folding his arms across his chest, making a point to show Hermione, among other people who had turned to see the two tall young men inches away from each other, that he, unlike Weasley, did not have his wand out. Weasley glared at Draco, and his eyes slid over to Hermione.

"I'll see you at school," he said curtly. "I don't suppose you're coming to the Burrow this summer." He shot Draco one last glare and stalked off, towards Potter, Draco noticed, who had decided wisely not to get involved, and who gave Draco a sort of _shrug_ as if to say at once 'thanks' and 'couldn't be helped.' Draco was alerted to Hermione again by a tiny sniff she had no doubt been trying to conceal from him. Just how upset she was; her eyes sparkled and her lower-lip trembled.

"What did he say to you?" Draco asked worriedly. He knew Weasley could be a right twat—he'd seen Hermione in third year, running down to Hagrid's crying, because Weasley and Potter weren't talking to her, and again last year when Weasley had been going out with that Brown girl and being completely insensitive about his female best-friend having a crush on him. Draco knew; he wasn't stupid, or blind: he just couldn't see what Hermione could see in that boy. _Mind you, it's pretty amazing she likes you, come to think of it_, Draco thought. All he could come up with was that Hermione had very bizarre taste in men, and he didn't doubt he'd find out she'd liked Neville Longbottom at some point.

"Doesn't matter," Hermione said hollowly, in that pitch he knew meant she was choked up with tears that she hadn't yet unleashed. He sighed heavily and took her hand, leading her away from the werewolf-rights campaigners, behind the booth for Madam Malkins robes—_Ooh, dressrobes half-price. I'd better look at those before she shuts up_, he thought, quickly flashing the woman a smile before tugging Hermione behind the tarpaulin.

"If you say 'I'm fine' I'm afraid I'm going to have to use Ligilimensy on you," he threatened playfully. His mother always said 'I'm _FINE_,' with the pitch of her voice getting higher with the second syllable. His father always had to watch out when she said that, because then she definitely was _not_ alright. And his father usually had to pay for her saying that with jewellery.

"It's just…stupid things," Hermione shook her head, passing her forearm across her eyes, wiping the tears away and smudging her sexily-smoky eye-makeup. Her lips were as moist as her eyes as she sniffed miserably and her lower-lip trembled. Draco leaned his forehead against hers, sighing softly, taking her waist.

"Talk to me," he said softly. "You can talk to me, Hermione; I'm your boyfriend. And you know I have no qualms with cursing Weasley, especially if it's for you." That cheered her up a little bit, put a little smile on her lips. He tenderly brushed the tears away from her cheeks and she sniffed again sharply. She blinked the tears from her eyes and smiled wearily.

"Just stupid things I was afraid people would say," she said softly. "A hypocrite."

"That's dragon-dung," Draco snapped, a little too waspishly he realised he'd have liked to. He gently pulled her closer to him and nudged her slightly reddened little nose. "I mean…he doesn't know what he's talking about. Weasley's never met the Notts. Who is he to judge?"

"I know, it's silly," Hermione sniffed, her smile strengthening. "It isn't easy to stand up to Ron sometimes. He gets carried away."

"Well, I could get carried away with you, but on a whole different dimension," Draco whispered, inching closer to Hermione's lips. He pressed his against hers and sighed, cupping the back of her neck in his hand, taking her waist, smoothing her hair away from her throat as she kissed him back with slow, deliberated sensuousness. Her hands crept around his hips and she laughed suddenly into his lips. She broke away, bringing with her from the band of his jeans the otter plush-toy he had just won.

"What's this?" she asked, laughing, wondering why he'd stuck it in the band of his jeans. _Well, I wanted free hands when I was confronting Weasley_, he rationalised.

"It's…it's all I could get with my tickets," Draco smiled embarrassedly. "It's an otter. They had all different ones, but considering your position on part-human creatures, I didn't want to risk it giving you an all-magical animal." He got a laugh, and he was happy. "I got it for you." Hermione smiled softly, hugging the toy to her chest.

"The otter's my Patronus form," she smiled. He'd guessed correctly. _Whoo!_

* * *

**A.N.**: Alright: Two apologies; firstly, this is about an entire month overdue, but I _did_ submit that little mini-chapette earlier to ease your withdrawal symptoms. Secondly, this chapter was ten Word Document pages long, so congratulations for reading it all the way through. Oh—And sorry I lied in some review-response PMs and said this would be a Phaedra chapter: I'm writing that now and I'll post it directly after this one, and it _will_ be from Phaedra's perspective (and a lot shorter than this chapter).

* * *


	13. The Talk: Take Two

**A.N.**: Me again! This chapter will definitely be shorter than the last; mostly because I keep having coughing fits that are tearing my throat apart! It feels like there's a plum lodged in my throat! [By the way; if you haven't noticed this already, when I'm ill I complain. _A lot_. To anyone!] This chapter is brought to you by I-Don't-Have-To-Go-To-Work-Tomorrow; for the best in excuses not to go to work, see Hannah!!!! {Even if they're real excuses, they're excuses nonetheless!}

* * *

Phaedra fiddled with delicate Art Nouveau antique necklace William had given her for her birthday; its blood-red garnets complimented the red tulle following the hemline and bust of her delicate floral robes [If you type in _Vintage Textile_ and hit gallery, go to Edwardian, the gown is from 1905 and I'm obsessed with it] and the trim of the embroidered panel down the front. Expecting to out tonight, she had swept her hair up with several blood-red roses from her rose-garden, but now she was so agitated she hadn't wanted to leave the house. She sighed heavily and let the necklace drop, put the embroidery she had been working on in her little work-basket and stood up, brushing down the skirt of her gown, and stalked out of her little sitting-room.

_I can't see _anything _from in here_, she thought, shooting an accusatory glare at the windows that gave her a view only of her walled-gardens and the vibrant lawn that stretched to them. _William's view is better_; her husband's working study—the room she rarely entered because it was so dark and dreary, and besides that William's secret haven away from her when he wanted a mope—was right off the main hallway with brocade-hung windows looking out to the left onto the front-steps. She went straight to the first window and moved aside the gauzy sheers that protected the furniture from the noonday sun in summertime, and checked the front lawn.

"What are you doing?" William asked sharply. He was sitting at his grand desk, building a doll's house from scratch—modelled after their very own home. Whenever something with work—or with _her_—got to him too much, and he knew he was going to regret being so stressful later, he turned to making models. Teddy's nursery had been packed with them; during her second pregnancy she had not been the most accommodating lady.

"What are you building a doll's house for?" Phaedra retorted, not wanting to admit that she was spying. Or trying to, considering her sixteen-year-old daughter still had not returned from her date with Draco Malfoy.

"Don't change the subject—and it's for Hermione's room. I realised the other day that there is no doll's house in her bedroom, and I'd like her to have it because every little girl has a doll's house," William remarked, focusing on papering the wall of what was to become a fully-working kitchen. The doll's house was larger than Princess Mary's in Windsor Castle!

"Darling, Hermione is sixteen years old; she won't be playing with a doll's house," Phaedra laughed.

"I know that, blossom," her husband said easily, licking his lips and pushing his glasses up his nose. "But that room is so big and just think—when Draco knocks her up, Hermione's baby will love chewing on the furniture. You have to think of the future generations in these situations, darling." She had turned back to the window while William was talking; now she cricked her neck painfully glancing back over her shoulder. William smirked, giggled softly to himself, and tiled the floor of the kitchen.

"You talked to her, didn't you? About—?"

"I told her…boys only want two things," William said, poking his tongue out in concentration as he placed tiny miniatures of the paintings of the kitchen inside the little miniature kitchen. Phaedra frowned. Her father had told her boys only wanted one thing from her.

"Two?"

"Sex and food."

"Oh," she said softly. _That makes sense_, she thought, turning back to the window.

"Look at you!" William laughed softly. "You need a hobby, sweets. Why don't you try fixing that old writing-cabinet you love so much?"

"My darling," Phaedra sighed, pushing the curtain aside again and wrinkling her nose disappointedly, "I can only fix one thing at a time. And I'm still working on you."

"Somebody's in a mood this evening!"

"I'm worried. Stop nagging," Phaedra pouted.

"Phaedra, she's _fine_," William sighed soothingly. "Hermione's got a good head on her shoulders. She's not just going to jump him and have super happy fun time on her first date. There will _be_ no fireworks for Draco Malfoy in his foreseeable future. Those two barely know each other."

"That didn't stop us," Phaedra smirked, glancing back at her husband. He looked up from the little parlour he was stocking with real shrunken wine-bottles he'd taken out of the second wine-cellar.

"Oh my god," William sighed heavily, sitting back on his haunches and shaking his head. "Suddenly I feel like digging up your father and apologising to him for ever having had sex with his daughter."

"Oh, that's alright, William," Phaedra sighed, turning back to the window. "It's enough that you've apologised to me." With a loud _thwack_ William's large, strong hand landed on her backside and she jumped. He encompassed her in his strong arms and Phaedra giggled girlishly as he held her close.

"What was that?" he asked, playfully threatening. She grinned and kissed his lips, tugging on his lower-lip with her teeth, linking her arms around his neck. Her husband had _never_ been _old_. He was packed with so much youthfulness and energy that most of the time _she_ felt like the older one in the marriage. Most of the time William was less mature than Teddy. But Phaedra wouldn't have had him any other way. William's ability to have fun and make the most of any situation had attracted her from the very beginning. Their relationship couldn't have lasted as long as it had after the fiasco with Hermione if William hadn't been who he was. He knew how delicate she was before he married her, and he knew how to take care of her after _it_ had happened. And when Teddy was born! She'd had to forcibly make him return to work because the attention he was giving her, and Teddy, had driven her almost insane. William sighed softly and pressed his forehead against hers.

"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked softly. "Your mother told you that you'd go straight to hell if you ever even _touched_ a boy, and we both know _that_ didn't work." Phaedra pouted, resting her cheek against William's chest. She didn't want to lose her baby girl so soon after she'd just found her again. And Draco Malfoy was _stealing_ her away from them with those blonde haired-blue eyed good looks and cocky charm.

"He's only going to end up hurting her," she pouted darkly.

"By the look of the bruises on her neck the other night, I'd say she already has," William said tartly, with a smirk. Phaedra smacked her open palm against his chest.

"William _please_!"

"Honey; they're teenagers. They like kissing. And you know very well what would happen if you forbid them to see each other," William grinned, inching his lips closer to hers. Phaedra hummed a giggle, pressed against the window-casement, and looked through her lashes up at her husband. Her parents had locked her in her old bedroom and taken away her wand when she'd announced she was going out with William Nott. He'd flown in through her window and they'd been caught having sex in her old bed surrounded by the porcelain dolls and plush animals her daddy had given her all through her childhood. They had called William a 'cradle-snatcher' because she was so much younger; he'd called them 'Gomez and Morticia,' and not in a nice way.

"You're just annoyed that she's on a date and you don't know what's going on," William guessed softly.

"I'm not annoyed that she's on a date—I'm annoyed that she might like it and want to go on another one. She'll like _him_ better than us and then we'll _never_ see her," Phaedra said desperately. She couldn't lose her baby again—not to _Draco Malfoy_!

"Honey, she couldn't very well have sex with either of us nearby," William smirked. "Of course she wants to go out—I'm _joking_! Seeing your daughter dating should make you feel terror, not jealousy! Look, she'll go out, have a lot of junk-food, throw up and need someone to take care of her in case she's ill again. Happy?" The prospect of waiting hand-and-foot on her ill daughter did have a certain appeal to it.

"I'll be you she lets _Draco_ take care of her," she snarled vindictively, staging several murders of that teenaged boy inside her head; the most effective was the blunt hedge-clippers. She wouldn't want him to go too quickly! "Where are they?" She turned back to the window, extremely indignant. It was past eleven o'clock and Hermione still wasn't home—she didn't even want to _know_ if Teddy was home; his track-record showed she would _not_ be walking into his bedroom in the late-hours _ever_ again.

"Probably having sex in her bedroom," William remarked, and Phaedra elbowed him when he giggled.

"You know what, because you're so sensitive and understanding, when she has her heart broken, I'll send Hermione to _you_ to sort out," she threatened. He chuckled softly and returned to his doll's house, knowing that should that opportunity arise, Phaedra would let _no one_ else have that position of caring for her baby. She stood a little straighter, peered closer to the window, as the light from the hallway windows and the little lamps either side of the doors illuminated a young couple standing inches away from each other and nudging noses affectionately. _They're home_, she gasped internally, fighting with herself not to run off and snatch Hermione inside.

Phaedra knew happy children. And for as long as she had known Draco—which was _all_ his life including his mother's pregnancy—he had _not _been one of them. He had never had any friends, cosseted by his parents who thought him too good for socialisation with children in such places as nursery-schools and play-groups, and when he started Hogwarts he just got more and more miserable until Phaedra had voiced her concerns to Narcissa about the poor boy's mental health. He and Teddy were quite close, and Teddy didn't have very many friends of his own, and she didn't know what would have happened to Teddy if Draco had done something drastic. _Now_, however, he was _smiling_. She rarely saw him truly _grin_, except when he one-upped William at _Monopoly_. But he held onto Hermione's hand as she tried to walk away; she ended up threading her hands around his neck and—

"How long have you been spying?" William whispered in her ear, making her shiver.

"Sixteen years. I'm getting good, aren't I," she smirked.

"Come away from the window; they might see you," William whispered, trying to move her away. _They can't see anything but each other_, she thought wistfully. She rested her head against his chest, just watching the two. Hermione was blushing and smiling coquettishly; Draco was doing that _smiling_-thing again.

"He does seem a lot happier," she said to herself. _Maybe being with Hermione is good for him, _she thought. It wasn't as if she couldn't understand why Draco Malfoy would have wanted to go out on a date with her daughter for any reason other than her looks. They'd talked all evening at the Malfoys' dinner-party.

"I'll kill him," William growled, and Phaedra had to put all her weight in tugging on his arm, almost dragging her across the carpeted-floor, to keep him from going to murder Draco. She dragged him back to the window; Draco gave Hermione one last lingering kiss, her hand clasped loosely in his, before stepping back and smiling, letting her go. _Well, that didn't end too badly_, she thought.

"Quick!" She gasped and flung herself into the little fireside chair William had in his office just for her if she wanted to sit with him. William sighed and turned to his doll's house. They heard the front-door open and Hermione's happy laugh and a very demure goodnight, and Draco was walking down the lawn as soon as the front-door was closed behind her and he knew she was home safely. Phaedra waited a few minutes, glad Hermione thought they had probably gone to bed because it was so late and didn't come into the study, and stood up, reaching for the door.

"Are you coming to bed?" she asked William. He looked away from the doll's house and grinned rakishly, leaping at her.

As she opened the study door, the front-doors burst open with a low laugh and a blurted giggle, and the blonde girl—_at least it's the same one_—they'd seen the other night came backwards into the house, practically _mauling_ Teddy's face as he slammed the front-doors behind him and grabbed her in his arms. The smell of cigarette-smoke and alcohol lingered on their clothing—however sparse_ hers _was. William had the presence of mind—because Phaedra just stood there, stunned—to clear his throat pointedly, and the two stopped what they were doing. Teddy slid his eyes from the girl onto them, and Phaedra just stared. The girl gasped, hid a giggle behind her hand, and bit her lip as she glanced up at Teddy.

And then the silly tart had the audacity to grab her son, plaster a searing kiss on his lips, and whisper something in his ear before turning to the doors. Phaedra's jaw dropped, if possible, even further when Teddy twisted, showing them his back, following the girl's lips with his own as he shut the door behind her. His t-shirt showed tiny speckles—tiny, but noticeable, because the t-shirt was white—of something red. In short two-inch trails of three. _Fingernails_, she gasped hollowly. Teddy gave them one wide-eyed look and fled.

"You know, I do believe I will have The Talk with them," she said faintly.

"Be sure to tell Hermione to _never_ trust boys, because we lie _big time_," William said. "And ask Ted…just who in the hell that girl was because she has _incredible_ legs. Ask him where he picked her up!"

It made Phaedra shiver unpleasantly each time she tried to start the conversation in her mind; it would have been easier to talk to two daughters, or she could have let William handle Ted. But no; she had a son _and_ daughter about the same age and they knew far too much than they should. It wasn't healthy for _her_ that they were getting to 'that age' and wanting to experiment. She shivered again, shaking her head.

"Jesus! Teddy! What did you let Marilis _do _to you?" Hermione's voice rang down the corridor, sounding at once indignant and mirthful.

"The girl is a wild-cat," Teddy's reply came, with a groan. "How was your night?"

"It was really nice. Look what Draco gave me!" Phaedra practically ran down the corridor, bursting into Teddy's room, where the two siblings had congregated to discuss the important things in life; their dates. _What did he give her?_ If it was another hickey, she would personally cut off Draco Malfoy's tongue. Among other things. Hermione had her hair held away from her throat—_I'll kill him_—but then Phaedra stopped, frowned bemusedly at her daughter, who was staring at her, and Phaedra suddenly wondered what she looked like to her children.

Hermione was showing off a very lovely pair of gold earrings; winged hearts glinted, swinging from hammered circles of gold._ Wow! Jewellery on a first-date. That boy knows how to treat a lady right!_ She glanced from Hermione to Teddy and sighed heavily, closing the door softly behind her.

"Alright, listen…I know we've always let the birds and bees fly around this house…Sex," she sighed, running her hand over her face, cradling her elbow in her palm, and when she glanced through her fingers both her children had their foreheads in their hands, "is something that isn't going to be…_good_," she felt ill, "until you're…older."

"_Mother_," Teddy complained, looking as though he was in some intense form of pain.

"No; we've never really…I know your father spoke to you when you spent a lot of time in the bathroom when you were twelve, but we've never really…_talked_ about sex before, and I think we should have that discussion now," Phaedra said, brushing her palms against each other nervously. Hermione had glanced at Teddy, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes glittering, trying her best not to laugh. Teddy sighed heavily, shooting his sister a dark look, and leaned forward, elbows on knees, expression gloomy.

"Alright; go ahead," Hermione sighed, as if signing her own death-warrant.

"Okay…" _What am I supposed to say?_ "Well…if you _were_ to, you know, _do it_ now," Phaedra sighed, unable to look her daughter in the eye, and resorted to running her fingers over her face again, pinching the bridge of her nose, "you would have _some_ pleasure in it," a nasty shiver went down her spine, "but it would be a lot better if—"

"What you're trying to say," Teddy sighed, taking charge, seeing as how Phaedra could barely even string a sentence together without shuddering, "is that Hermione is still far too young to have sex."

"Well—," Hermione spoke up, frowning at Teddy as if she disagreed, but Phaedra let her speak, "both our bodies and our _minds_ have to reach a certain point of maturity." She shot Teddy a look that suggested there would definitely be a feminist movement in this house beginning before long. "And I wouldn't want to look back on my life and regret the decisions I've made—and I would have to love him, if I was to have sex with him."

"Yeah," Phaedra smiled, glad she didn't actually have to say those things out-loud, but a little irked that her children knew so much already without her ever having spoken to them. _They're right; kids _do _grow up too fast_, she thought, wondering just what else they were learning at that school where magic happened.

"And you'd have to respect him," Hermione added. "Or it's meaningless."

"And that—"

"_I_ respected _her_," Teddy nodded.

"It's a beautiful, _beautiful_ thing," Hermione added. Phaedra couldn't think of one single thing to say. No, that wasn't right.

"The bottom line is," she sighed, looking her children right in the eyes. "I love you. And I always want you to be able to talk to me." They both nodded sombrely.

"Love you too," they both told her, and she smiled and sighed as she stepped out of the bedroom. _That wasn't too bad_, she thought, thinking that she felt a little better for their talk.

Until the door closed and Hermione's rippling giggles and Teddy's deep, rumbling laugh echoed down the corridor.

"_Oh my god!!_" Hermione shrieked breathlessly.

"_How pathetic_," Teddy laughed brokenly.

* * *

**A.N.**: I had fun writing this chapter. With several references to _Roseanne_. Roseanne is LEGEND; she has much knowledge. Adieu, I hope you enjoyed!

* * *


	14. ADOPTED!

**Baby has been Adopted!**

After the appeal made less than seventy-two hours ago for literary parents wanting to adopt my abandoned stories, I am very pleased to announce that _Once Upon A Goddess_ has just successfully adopted my story _Nott!_

I wish Terra all the very best, and hope you all hop on over to her profile at:

fanfiction. net/u/3585479/ (without spaces; or type _Once Upon A Goddess_ into the search under 'author').

And please check out her continuation of _Nott!_ here:

fanfiction. net/s/8092109/1/Nott


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